


Kiss My Eyes And Lay Me To Sleep

by xantissa



Series: Power Imbalance [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Humor, Coercion, Dubious Consent, F/M, Families of Choice, Itachi's crows, M/M, Mild Incest, Original Character Death(s), PTSD, Temporary Character Death, Violence, boys learning to live for themselves for once, heavy UST, reference to violence against women, slight insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 08:18:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4698863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xantissa/pseuds/xantissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Itachi was supposed to be done with it all. To be dead. Instead he has to juggle learning how to live again, women, children, way too many snakes, suspiciously growing pool of friendly criminals and a not completely sane brother. Being dead would probably be easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not a single coherent fic, but a series of scenes ranging from the past to the near future, explaining a lot of Itachi and Sasuke’s story in this AU. If you had questions, this is where the answers are.

AFI - Prelude 12 21

_This is what I brought you, this you can keep_

_This is what I brought, you may forget me_

_I promise to depart, just promise one thing_

_Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep_

 

_This is what I thought, I thought you'd need me_

_This is what I thought, so think me naive_

_I'd promise you a heart, you'd promise to keep_

_Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep_

 

 

He woke up to screams.

 

He remembered thinking how unfair it was, that even after death, he was still denied peace.

 

It was the smell of water and salt that first clued him him that something wasn’t right. Then he became aware of the cold touch to the sides of his face and the _pain_.

 

It burned. It tore through his body with a viciousness he couldn’t comprehend. His chest was a shining beacon of agony and his eyes hurt as though somebody was pouring boiling water from directly over them.

 

He opened his mouth, trying to gasp out a breath, or maybe just choke himself because it didn't matter that he was still awake, he would surely die in a moment. No human could survive something like this.

 

In the moments before he lost consciousness, he recognized the screaming voice as belonging to Sasuke. He didn’t recognize the words though.

 

*          *          *

 

Their house always smelled like the lemon peel and lavender that his mother used to put into tiny, pretty muslin bags and place all over the house.

 

It had to be late evening, judging by the soft light filtering in from the wide windows. He walked down the main hall, through the dining room and into the garden that his mother was so proud of.

 

There, under the shade of the old sakura tree, his father was going through the taijutsu kata perfected by his family. His formes were flawless, flowing effortlessly one into the next.

 

He sat down on the wooden deck, just watching his father move. His eyes burned and his chest felt tight, but not in the way the sickness had made it hard to breathe these last few years. It was the same kind of pain he felt when he’d stood behind his kneeling parents, sword clenched in sweaty hands.

 

“Itachi-chan.”

 

He jerked his head to look at the woman who addressed him, not having heard her at all.

 

“Mother.”

 

She was even more beautiful than in his memories. Thanks to the nature of the Sharingan's perfect recall, he remembered her exactly as she looked the night he murdered her.

 

Her dark eyes were warm, always warm and sparkling with good humor.

 

He’d forgot that she used to look at him like that.

 

“Oh, my son,” she said gently, sitting beside him and reaching out to touch his face.

 

He _flinched_.

 

“Itachi.” She said his name with all the softness and love a mother could. “I am sorry.”

 

His eyes snapped open.

 

_When had he closed them?_

 

She was still looking at him with those soft eyes, but there was so much sadness in them now, so much pity.

 

“I am so sorry for what you had to suffer. It was our, the adults’, choices that forced you to decide between the life of your family and a war.”

 

He stared at her. He knew his choice had been made for the greater good. If the Uchiha had started a coup it would have weaken Konoha significantly, and since the political situation had been already extremely strained, it was understood another Great War would have been sparked off. The casualties would have been in the tens of thousands. What was a few hundred in that equation?

 

“You were born as the pride of our clan.” His father's voice, stern and cold, cut through his anguished memories. “You were a gift from the gods as well as a warning. Since the day you were born, there had been signs that you were unique and important. Instead of obeying the warnings, accepting your own warnings to us, we chose to revel in the power you represented.” He spoke with a calm, strong voice, one befitting a clan head. “It was our pride that killed us.” The older man smiled wryly. “In this case quite literally, too.”

 

Itachi closed his eyes, leaning into his mother’s warmth in a way he hadn’t since he’d been six. He heard the implied forgiveness in his father's words, in his mother’s touch, and wished he was still capable of crying, of expressing that huge something that had taken residency in his chest.

 

“I’m tired,” he admitted eventually, feeling his father’s hand resting on his shoulder.

 

“You are too young to think that way.” His mother chided him gently, stroking his head the way she had when he was very small.

 

Itachi was all but blind, his lungs turned into so much mush by a sickness no one seemed capable of curing. He was thirteen when he’d been ordered to murder his whole clan to spare the world another war. He spent the next ten years infiltrating international criminal organizations which left nothing but pain, destruction and death in its wake. Through those ten long years he waited only for Sasuke to grow strong enough to finally grant Itachi the death he justly deserved. He hadn’t felt young in… In a very, very long time now.

 

“I’m already dead,” he admitted, feeling at peace for the first time in his whole life.

 

He felt his mother press a kiss to his forehead.

 

“Oh my son, I think your brother is more stubborn than that.”

 

*          *          *

 

It was agony that brought Itachi back into awareness, hot and molten, it was excruciating.

 

“You have to save him!”

 

Sasuke tried to sound commanding but only managed acute desperation.

 

_I am trying, you ungrateful brat!_

 

“Try harder!”

 

Surely, he couldn’t survive this. Every inch of Itachi’s body screamed bloody murder, especially his eyes, hurting so much that if he were capable of holding a kunai, he would probably have gouge them out himself, or just slit his own throat.

 

He managed to gasp for breath and _screamed_.

 

_It would be easier if he wasn’t such a big, dumb, overachiever!_ the oddly clear voice snapped, somehow managing to be heard through the cacophony in Itachi’s head.

 

*          *          *

 

The day Uchiha Mikoto gave birth to her firstborn son, Itachi, had been an exceptionally beautiful one. The sun had been shining, but the temperature was mild. The air was scented with a multitude of blooming flowers.

 

The birth itself had been quick and fairly easy, everything flowing with textbook accuracy. The only strange thing was the murder of crows that took residency in the hospital’s roof. The infernal birds had been making a terrible ruckus, flapping their wings and cawing loudly all day.

 

None of the Uchiha present took much notice of that though, preoccupied with the small, healthy baby boy that had been born that day.

 

No one noticed the fact that the Uchiha district seemed to have been inhabited by more crows than usual in the days after Uchiha Mikoto had come home from the hospital with her newborn son.

 

Once the weather had started getting warm enough to leave the windows open in the nursery, Mikoto noticed the oddity of the birds. They constantly perched windowsill and even flew inside. Every day she had to shoo the stubborn birds out.

 

One day she entered the nursery to the sight of a crow perching carefully on the rung of her son’s crib, stretching out over the baby and trying to feed him a worm.

 

Deciding enough was enough, all windows in Itachi’s nursery had been kept closed from that day on. Mikoto didn’t want to think how many bugs the birds had already managed to feed her son before she’d noticed. When the crows lost access to the house, they took to leaving the various treats on her windowsills. Mikoto was torn between laughter and honest insult. Were the silly birds so sure she wasn’t feeding her child properly? It had been funny, though, watching the birds study the rapidly growing child, the size of the worms they brought, and become agitated.

 

It stopped being funny though when the overly intelligent birds had decided that just hunting for the bugs was inefficient and had taken to stalking the Aburame clan, stealing their bugs and bringing them to Mikoto’s house every day. In surprisingly large quantities.

 

It was a challenge, to stay serious and not collapse into a fit of giggles when the Aburame delegation had tracked the birds to the Uchiha compound and raised a stink, claiming it was a deliberate action on the part of the Uchiha by targeting the Aburame.

 

It became an everyday sight in their household to see a crow hopping along the floor, cawing loudly, and their son crawling after the bird as fast as his tiny limbs could take him. The birds would fly down to perch on his head, his shoulders, just hop all over him. Sometimes Itachi would catch a bird that got too close and carry him around with him like a stuffed animal, and the crow would _let_ him.

 

*          *          *

 

It was the sound of water that he registered first. His eyelids felt heavy and his body relaxed. There was no pain now and the sensation was so unexpected that it jarred him awake. He was floating on his back in warm water.

 

“I swear, you are such a drama queen,” a painfully familiar voice said from just over his head.

 

He opened his eyes and stared directly at Shisui who was leaning over him, appearing the way he’d looked just before… Before everything.

 

There were so many things Itachi wanted to say. Shisui was the only person in his life who made Itachi want to talk.

 

“Calling the kettle black, Shisui?” he managed to croak out.

 

It was a pleasure, to watch his childhood friend’s face scrunch up in laughter, eyes forming little half moons and cheeks bulging out. He looked ridiculous. He looked happy.

 

“I missed you, my friend,” Shisui said, putting his palms on Itachi’s cheeks and pinching them none-too-gently.

 

“Can I stay here?” Itachi asked, his voice sounding small and childlike. He thought it would be nice to just stay like this. It was quiet here. Peaceful.

 

Shisui looked at him with kindness and pity in his warm eyes.

 

“Sometimes, I thought you were born an old man in a child’s body. Always so serious.”

 

“Shisui…” Itachi tried again, afraid to be denied even this.

 

“I’m sorry,” his friend said gently.

 

“I want to stay here,” Itachi pleaded.

 

Shisui looked at him with gentle eyes.

 

“It’s not your time yet.”

“I already lived too long.” The water began to smell like iron, like blood. It wasn’t as comforting as before.

 

Shisui scrunched up his face in a ridiculous way.

 

“Itachi, you have never lived a day, you just went through the motions. First to be what your father and the elders expected of you and after, you were nothing more than a dead man walking. How about actually trying to live for once?”

 

Itachi’s throat hurt again, the words hard to push out.

 

“I have murdered two hundred and forty seven members of my clan. I can not just go on, I have to be punished.” It was such an obvious fact, Itachi found it strange to to have to defend it to his friend.

 

“The order had already been given. The clan was dead either way. Because you took that duty upon your shoulders, you saved Sasuke and a possible future, a chance to rebuild the clan again.” Shisui said sternly, before softening again. “Besides, you have died too many times already. It’s time to stop the pity party, Itachi.”

 

Itachi didn’t close his eyes, too intent was he on watching the way his friend’s face moved and expressed emotions. So easily, so naturally, so alien for Itachi himself.

 

“What do you want me to do?” Itachi asked, his voice straining at the edges.

 

“To live,” Shisui said simply, putting his hands on Itachi’s shoulders.

 

“How?” Itachi asked desperately, as he felt Sishui push down, submerging him deeper.

 

“However you like,” came the muffled words as the bloody water closed over Itachi’s face.

 

*          *          *

 

He woke up to darkness so complete he instantly knew. Just raising his hand was exhausting, the simple movement took all of his willpower.

 

There were thick bandages over his face, and wrapped all around his head. He could also sense a faint healing chakra from the bindings.

 

He could feel another person beside him, a presence both alien and as familiar to him as breathing.

 

 

His brother was lying beside him, his face pressed into Itachi’s right shoulder, breathing slowly, regularly.

 

His chakra was drained nearly dry, but he tried to direct whatever was still there to his eyes, trying to activate his Sharingan, even if he already suspected what was going on.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Itachi stopped his efforts, trying to ease his painful breathing.

 

He always knew this would happen. He wanted it to happen. It was one of the reasons he managed to live for so long with his illness. Sasuke needed to take his eyes so that he could stop the degeneration caused by Mangekyo Sharingan.

 

He’d just never expected to live through it.

 

There was a movement close by. Something rustled and Itachi was already opening his mouth, trying to find enough breath to speak, when an irritated voice in his head stopped him:

 

_Don’t try speaking yet, idiot Brother._

 

Movement again, and then gentle pressure on his side. The pressure moved fluidly towards his chest, the small weight placed oddly across it until Itachi understood what he was feeling. A snake slithered onto his chest. Wherever the snake’s body touched him, Itachi experienced a cool sensation. The pain in his chest that he’d grown used to over the last few years, eased significantly and Itachi understood.

 

_“You healed me_.” Oh talking to the snake telepathically was so much more convenient now that he could barely breathe.

 

_That’s still a work in progress. I don't have enough chakra to heal you completely. There’s too much to do._

 

_“I was all but dead. You shouldn’t have been able to save me. No one should.”_

 

_Sasuke was panicking so badly, pulling at the connection too harshly, Mother Queen had to intervene. It will take time, but you will survive._

 

_“Foolish little brother,”_ Itachi thought mainly to himself, not sure if the snake could overhear his thoughts or not. _“Should have just let me go.”_

 

Judging by the way the snake snorted in response, he had heard.

 

It was an eerie thing, feeling a snake snort telepathically. Somehow, it wasn't something Itachi expected from Sasuke’s summons.

 

_We bit him for all the drama he caused,_ the snake said with a kind of vicious satisfaction in his voice. _And when Mother Queen said to heal him, I healed everything but the bites._

 

The snake was quiet for a while, before unexpectedly speaking again:

 

_He is not good at letting things go._

 

Itachi wanted to snort at this himself, but he literally had no breath to spare and hadn’t yet figured out how to do it telepathically. Besides, he could feel his energy waning rapidly.

 

_“My name is Itachi,”_ he thought at the snake with the last of his strength.

 

_Kanaye,_ said the snake, shifting on his chest and radiating more of that cool chakra. _Now shut up and rest while I try to rebuild what I can of that trash heap you call your lungs._

 

*          *          *

 

The first time Hatake Kakashi had met Uchiha Itachi, the latter was four years old and quite frankly managed to scare the hell out of Kakashi.

 

It was late in the evening, Kakashi was on his way to the Uchiha district for a mandatory meeting which would judge his transplanted eye’s progress when he heard the commotion.

 

The clamor was horrid, so he jumped onto the highest branch available and took a look at his surroundings.

 

There, above the Uchiha district, was a flock of black birds, crows as he would later discover. They were circling one particular house and diving on droves, cawing their heads off. There were easily a thousand of them, so thick in the air they made the sky look black.

 

It took him an embarrassingly long time to realise that the house in the centre of the commotion was the house of the Uchiha clan head. Once he did, Kakashi made it there in record time, already afraid of what he would find.

 

When he had jumped into the back yard, he stopped cold. Under the old sakura tree was a blue blanket spread out on the green grass, and on it sat Fugaku’s three-year-old son. There was a small scratch on his arm, the even spacing indicating canine teeth.

 

Just a few paces from him was something that probably used to be a dog. Judging by the skinny frame it was wild, but it was hard to be certain with the amount of…damage…the animal suffered.

 

The crows kept cawing still, rising up in the air and then diving down onto the already dead animal and using their beaks to rip away skin and muscle. Kakashi hadn’t been aware crows in sufficient numbers could case this kind of damage. All the grass around the animal’s body was tinted red, with pieces of flesh scattered every which way.

 

Even more disturbing than the huge murder of crows attacking the dog carcass had been how, after hopping over to rip some of the bloody flesh apart, they had then hopped cheerfully towards the child, offering the pieces of meat in their beaks to him. Kakashi had stared uncomprehendingly at the tableau for a long moment before he had realised that the birds were trying to _feed_ the boy. That the birds very obviously had _killed the dog for him_.

 

As far as Kakashi could tell they were not summons, just ordinary crows that had lived in their village and the forests surrounding it for centuries, longer than people probably. He knew they were smart and playful animals, but he’d never seen them react to anybody in that way.

 

Suddenly the door leading to the main dining room opened and Uchiha Mikoto, with an apron still tied around her waist and wearing pink rubber gloves, stepped out. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene.

 

Kakashi realized what she was going to do the same moment she moved. He opened his mouth to yell a warning but it was too late. She moved sharply in the child’s direction, calling “Itachi!”

 

The moment her foot touched the grass, the birds instantly changed focus. The cawing that had been dying down, immediately rose in volume and as one, the birds had flown at the woman.

 

Just as he had prepared to rush to the woman’s defense, the child, who’d been sitting very calmly in the middle of the veritable hurricane, suddenly made a sound.

 

“No!” The command was sharp and final, as much as it was said in a high and childish voice.

 

Immediately the flock dispersed, without coming close to touching the woman.

 

Kakashi had to admire how quickly Mikoto had gotten herself under control, her face switching to a calm expression and her moves, while quick, were steady and smooth as she approached the child.

 

“Itachi-chan, what happened?” she asked as he took her son in her arms.

 

The boy didn't cry, didn’t squirm, just shifted to make the position easier for her to hold him, and extended his arm with the still-bleeding scratches.

 

“The dog bit me,” he’d said in a calm voice, as if the recent vicious violence hadn’t t just taken place in front of him. As if that explained everything.

 

“You should have called me,” the mother chided gently, turning so that the boy no longer had a clear line of sight to the carcass.

 

“It’s okay, it can’t hurt me again.” The boy spoke calmly, as if completely unaffected by the blood, pain or violence.

 

Mikoto had cast a look at the carcass and swallowed. The boy was more than right.

 

“What if there had were more than one? You always need to call an adult if you are in danger. I’ve taught you that already, Itachi-chan.”

 

The boy tilted his head, confused suddenly.

 

“But shinobi-san was already here,” he said finally, and had raised his hand and pointed _right_ at Kakashi, still hidden in the branches.

 

Uchiha Mikoto turned to where her son had pointed pointing and her eyes widened, when she finally noticed Kakashi.

 

The child had known he was there. He had never been in direct sight for the boy to have noticed him, so he’d had to have actually sensed him somehow. But how? Even experienced jounin couldn’t sense Kakashi if he was masking his chakra, as he had been doing habitually.

 

Led by a nasty suspicion he’d looked around him, and in the distance, on a telephone pole, he saw a crow. The bird had been sitting there watching him. When he looked right at it, it flapped its wings and cawed in a mocking manner.

 

In later years, it came as no surprise that Uchiha Itachi used crows in his genjutsu, nor surprising was the fact that in or out of the village, it was impossible to sneak up on the boy.

 

Kakashi had also grown a healthy paranoia of the black feathered menace since that day.

 

*          *          *

 

He had no idea of how much had time passed. He woke up for short periods without any discernable pattern. If it was night, more often than not, he could feel Sasuke sleeping beside him, his younger brother's head pillowed on his arm. For all the years that had passed, Sasuke still smelled the same.

 

Kanaye was always there, usually insulting him and ordering him back to sleep. He suspected the snake was trying to keep him in a medically-induced coma, but Itachi kept unconsciously fighting it. His struggles earned him the nickname _stupidBrother,_ but he didn’t let it bother him because during one of the many telepathic snark fests they’d had with Kanaye, Itachi had managed to convince the snake that he should call Sasuke _FoolishLittleBrother_. That was the first time he regretted the loss of his sight, because he would have loved to have seen Sasuke’s face when the snakes started regularly calling him that.

 

And they all did, because it turned out they were not only vicious gossips, they were also still angry at Sasuke for whatever he’d done to force them to save Itachi. And soon, all of them used that moniker for their master.

 

If he woke up during the day he’d recognize three people who routinely took care of him. First was Juugo. The man’s chakra was wild and unique enough to be easily identified as one of Sasuke’s team members. But who intrigued Itachi more were the two women that were with him whenever Juugo or Sasuke were absent.

 

The had enough chakra to be considered ninja, but it was untrained. They were also young, and at least one of them had a small child, because he could smell milk on her regularly. In the brief moments before Kanaye put him back to sleep, Itachi thought he heard the sound of children outside the tent he was being kept in.

 

He couldn’t really understand what Sasuke was doing with a bunch of civilians? Women with children? It seemed to go against everything his brother was supposed to be about?

 

Eventually came a day when he woke up without Kanaye immediately snapping at him to go back to sleep. Itachi had already noticed that Sasuke Summons didn’t really have a chakra signature; they registered like ordinary animals. That was the only reason it took him so long to realise that there was a tiny little snake curled beside him, its small, smooth body pressed to his neck.

 

_“Hello?”_ he croaked out loud, his voice dry and cracked like the desert.

 

_Sasuke took Hajime and Kanaye for a mission three days ago._

 

This time the voice was young, painfully young, and female. Up till now Itachi had either met or heard about six snakes, but all of them were male. Two were healers, with Kanaye definitely the more powerful of the two, three were scouts, and one a fighter, probably the heavy hitter of the bunch, Hajime.

 

There was something small and vulnerable about this snake, the way she was curled into him, obviously seeking heat. She sounded very small, very young, and very afraid.

 

“Did something happen? _”_ he asked simply, realising that he was talking to a child.

 

_I think he has to take missions for money._

 

The snake was very eager to divulge information, something new for Itachi, because all the other ones he’d met were snarky, but also secretive to the extreme.

 

“Is three days a normal time for them to be gone?” Itachi pushed, hoping to get more information since he had such a willing interrogatee.

 

_I don’t know,_ the snake admitted sullenly.

 

Itachi felt her pull away and floundered a little. It had been many years since he’d even spoken to a child… But he still remembered how it was being an older brother.

 

“My name is Itachi, and yours?” he offered, hoping to make her feel more secure.

 

_Mirai,_ she said quietly.

 

“Nice to meet you, Mirai.” He always found that politeness cost him nothing and made so many things easier. “Can’t you ask Sasuke when he will be back?” he asked, mostly just to see what the snake’s response would be.

 

The young female was quiet for a very long time.

 

_He’s not talking to me. He’s angry_ , she said shamefully.

 

Itachi contemplated that answer for a while, trying to come up with a situation where a master would be angry with his summons to this degree. By the nature of their contract, the Summons had to obey every order, and couldn’t go against their master willfully.

 

“What happened?” he probed, curious despite himself.

 

He felt her shift, her small body uncurling near his neck and her tiny head coming to rest on his throat. She was so light he could barely feel her.

 

_You will be angry. Everybody is angry at me now,_ she murmured, sounding as if she was at the edge of tears. Could snake’s cry? _I’m sorry._

 

“I won’t be angry,” he offered. After all, there was very little that could make him angry these days. He found that being alive when he expected the oblivion of death had shifted his perspective a lot.

 

_You promise?_

 

Itachi could feel the corners of his lips tug up a bit. She was way too cute.

 

“I promise.”

 

_Everybody was yelling._ She started talking haltingly, her tiny body shivering ever so gently. _Sasuke was… He was not right. There was blood and chakra everywhere…and so much pain and fear. He kept screaming at us, but he was crying. I have never seen him cry before._

 

She was talking about the aftermath of their battle, Itachi realised.

 

_Everything was so…wrong. I just wanted to help. I wanted the taste of fear to go away._ She started to sound desperate, talking faster and less coherently. _I wanted to help!_

 

“What did you do?” he asked calmly.

 

_I bit you_. She admitted finally.

 

Since he was alive and even his chakra, though horribly depleted, was still fully functional, the bite couldn’t have been dangerous to his health.

 

“ _Mirai_.” he asked gently. “ _What does your bite do?_ ”

 

His throat was starting to hurt from all the talking.

 

_It seals free will. You will never be able to hurt him again, or go against his will. He was so afraid. I thought that making you safe would be good. Now everybody is angry at me, and nobody talks to me anymore._ _Hajime even bit my tail a few days ago_. She made the most heart-wrenching sniffle. _It hurt._

 

Itachi lay still and waited to feel anything at all at Mirai’s revelation but came up with nothing. Now that everything was said and done, he couldn’t even find a reason to ever want to hurt his brother again.

 

“Can it be reversed?” He’d never heard of something like this, nor did he feel any different.

 

_I don’t think so. The seal is part of your whole nervous system, anchored directly to your soul. Nothing short of the complete destruction of your spirit would affect it,_ the little snake admitted reluctantly.

 

Itachi raised his hand, feeling it tremble, and wondered just how long was he’d been confined to the bed. He managed to pet the small snake clumsily, his limb barely listening to his commands. She’d done nothing bad. She had the bloodless means to an end of a conflict and she’d used it. What confused him more was why his brother was angry at the snake.

 

“I’m not angry,” Itachi promised the rather sweet snake.

 

_Really?_

 

“Really.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I slowed down, but I have a LOT of work now. Remeber to heed teh warnings please, I am serious about them.

Three months.

 

That’s how long he was kept asleep by Kanaye. Most of his muscle mass was gone, his stamina was considered excellent when he managed to remain sitting up for ten whole minutes without becoming dizzy.

 

As they both seemed to be all but abandoned by Sasuke, he made friends with Mirai. She reminded Itachi so much of Sasuke at age five it almost hurt. But she also got his sense of humor.

 

“What do little snakes eat?”

 

 _Mice!_ Mirai answered eagerly. _Rats are too big yet._ She grumbled. _Hajime says I suck at hunting._

 

“I will teach you when I get better,” Itachi offered the sulking snake.

 

 _Thank you!_ She wriggled happily on his chest, nearly sliding off when he tried taking a deeper breath than usual. There was much flailing before she managed to secure a fairly safe position atop him again. _What do idiotBrother’s eat?_ she asked him cheekily.

 

“Little snakes,” Itachi answered in all seriousness, sending her into a fit of giggles which managed to roll her clear off his chest this time.

 

With this level of coordination she would need not only hunting lessons, but somebody who would hunt _for_ her.

 

*          *          *

 

There were new indignities everyday.

 

Once he was strong enough to stand on his feet, Itachi insisted on being allowed to relieve himself as a man should, not into a tube.

 

During his snail-slow walks to and from the latrine, he managed to finally learn something. There were at least twelve women in the camp, four children under the age of ten, two under fifteen, and one teenager around sixteen, judging by his voice.

 

He couldn’t learn much more, relying only on his sense of hearing and ability to sense chakra. All of them had some kind of chakra reserve, but in most cases it was completely untrained.

 

The older of the two women taking care of him was called Minako, and she was very, very afraid of angering Sasuke.

 

“Minako-san,” he asked one day, when she had finished giving him a sponge bath and had helped him clothe himself again. “What are you doing here?”

 

He could sense her hesitation and then surrender without having to see her.

 

“When Sasuke-sama killed Orochimaru…we expected to be executed soon after. Kabuto was always against this project and we were sure he would terminate the breeding program as soon as possible. It was a shock when Sasuke-sama came to finds us instead.”

 

Itachi had had a feeling that he was missing something very obvious.

 

“Breeding program?” he prompted when the woman had fallen silent.

 

“He had obtained some Uchiha genetic material and wanted to see if he could create children capable of activating the Sharingan.”

 

Something in Itachi’s chest turned. That Orochimaru dared to interfere in Uchiha business that way…

 

“The children.”

 

“Yes. They have more Uchiha characteristics than our generation, but none of us managed to ever activate the Sharingan. In that aspect we were a complete failure.”

 

“You generation… You mean all the adult females in the group,” Itachi speculated.

 

“Yes. It turned out that females showed more Uchiha characteristics, so Orochimaru decided to get rid of the males from the first batch.” She had spoken about all this dispassionately, treating it as a simple reality of her life. She had been born and raised in a lab and nothing that had happened her was shocking to her.

 

“If Sasuke freed you from the lab, what are you doing here, camping in the middle of nowhere with little children, scarce supplies, and a very real threat of being attacked? Sasuke is not a safe choice of companion,” Itachi had pressed, feeling that he was missing something important.

 

She was quiet for a while.

 

“All of us are part Uchiha, at least in blood,” she had started carefully. “We are aware of the…shift in power balance the execution of your clan caused. We felt that without a…significant power on our side, we could very well face the same fate.”

 

Itachi exhaled slowly through his teeth.

 

“You made a deal with Sasuke.”

 

“Yes,” she admitted. “We will become an official part of his clan with all the rights, and with him shouldering all responsibilities of a Clan Head. He will become responsible for providing protection, money, food, everything we need to survive.”

 

Itachi tilted his head back, thinking her words over. It was such a responsibility. Twelve women and seven children. All of them unable to survive on their own. It was such a non-Sasuke thing to do, to allow himself to be tied down like this.

 

“What did you offer in exchange?”

 

The woman’s breathing pattern hadn’t changed; she hadn’t flinched, but answered calmly:

 

“Children. Orochimaru’s problem lay in the fact he had only the one sample of Uchiha DNA. Both you and Sasuke-sama are full-blooded Uchiha males and can provide undamaged and more importantly, different genetic material. The deal is that every female who wants to stay agreed to give birth to two children.”

 

Itachi realized then, that Sasuke wasn’t completely…sane. This deal might have worked well in theory, but Itachi couldn’t even imagine how it was all going to play out.

 

“And you agreed to those conditions.”

 

This time the woman had snorted.

 

“This gives us a chance for a much better future than any experiment of Orochimaru’s could ever promise. And our children would be most probably Sharingan users, powerful enough to never be enslaved the way we were.” She had snapped at him, there was bitterness in her voice before she regained control. “It wasn’t a hard decision at all.”

 

*          *          *

 

Boredom was next to come. Every day he became a little bit stronger. In another few days he would walk by himself, barely even using the cane Juugo had made for him.

 

He spent as much time alone in the woods surrounding the camp as he could get away with. It disturbed him, the domestic sounds of kids playing and women cooking on large, open fires.

 

Itachi could face death a thousand times, could deal out torture and suffer it himself without his heart skipping a single beat.

 

But he could not deal with this motley group of people that were hoping to become a clan again.

 

His chakra levels were less than ten percent of his normal reserves, but he hadn’t been at full strength in years and had learned to deal with the handicap. Most people he’d fought the last two years never even realised he was all but blind and just a step away from total chakra exhaustion. It was so long now, he couldn’t remember how it felt to be at full power.

 

The long years of hiding his handicaps had forced him to develop extremely acute senses. They came in handy now, when he could no longer use his sight.

 

Also, for sensing the little mouse family that had made its home under the log he was sitting on.

 

While his body was abysmally weak and uncontrolled still, his ability to focus was unhindered. Molding a small amount of chakra into his palm was easier than breathing to him. One gesture and he could sense the lives of the mice extinguish instantly under the blow of his chakra.

 

While his natural reserves were almost too large, he never needed much to be deadly.

 

As he knelt down to gather the freshly killed critters, he tried not to dwell on the fact that he hadn’t met a single crow since he’d woken up.

 

They were gone.

 

His crows were gone.

 

Since his birth, there had always been crows. They were always around, somewhere close, forcefully feeding him bugs, going where no bird had gone before. He was sure he was so good at survival because by the age of three, he could distinguish all edible kinds of bugs by taste.

 

The birds had had his back when he couldn’t trust even his family. They never judged him. They never feared him. They taught him how to move through the forest like a creature, how to find water, food and shelter long before any teacher thought to do that.

 

They brought him things, little trinkets they’d found on the ground or had outright stolen from other people. Really, it was a miracle he hadn’t grown up marked as a petty thief, considering just how much contraband was in his possession at any given time.

 

Even after… They were the only things he still had.

 

They’d followed him into Akatsuki and took much enjoyment in tormenting various members. He was sure that at least half of his fearsome reputation in the group was thanks to the crow’s wicked sense of justice.

 

They were the one, single constant in his life.

 

And now they were gone.

 

*          *          *

It was raining the night Sasuke came back to the camp.

 

The weather had become colder suddenly, the way spring sometimes reached back to winter. The nights became freezing, the high altitude and the constant rains only adding to the misery.

 

When Sasuke entered the tent assigned to his brother he was braced for a lot of things, but not what he actually met.

 

There was a small oil lamp burning besides Itachi’s futon. His brother was asleep or maybe even unconscious, judging by the fact he wasn’t reacting at all to Hana, who was methodically swiping his bared chest with a wet cloth.

 

“What happened?” he snapped, something in his chest tightening painfully, pushing his reason back and letting his emotions take control.

 

“He started feeling steadily worse the last few days. When the rains started his fever and cough became worse. Yesterday the fever spiked. We’ve been taking turns trying to keep it down,” the young woman explained. She was actually older than him, but in many ways she registered on his senses as someone much younger. He wondered if he was already so jaded…

 

He knelt down beside Hana and caught her hand, taking the cold, wet cloth from her.

 

“Go rest,” he ordered quietly. “I’ll take care of him.”

 

She gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher before nodding and leaving.

 

As he was dipping the cloth into cold water and wringing it carefully, it occurred to him that Hana was feeling protective of Itachi, her hesitation to leave the unconscious man with him had probably come from Sasuke’s not-exactly sane behavior before.

 

He looked at his brother now.

 

Itachi was half-covered by the blankets, his shirt open exposing a pale, surprisingly scarless and thin chest. His hair was loose around his head, fanned out on the floor in a mass of soft, dark brown that always looked more inviting than the man himself.

 

It stunned Sasuke, the gentle, line of his brother’s jaw, his pale, parted lips. The inherent vulnerability of his delicate features, now that the most dangerous part of him was hidden under the bandages. Sasuke had no idea how much eyes changed the way he saw Itachi, until those eyes were no longer in evidence.

 

He put the wet cloth to Itachi’s neck, and immediately felt the heat coming off his brother.

 

“Kanaye,” he called, forcefully pulling the healer from his dimension when the snake didn’t answer promptly enough.

 

 _What_?! Kanaye hissed angrily, as he popped into existence in a small puff of smoke. _I was finally resting!_

 

Sasuke glowered at the Summon before pointedly looking at Itachi and then back to the angry snake.

 

 _Oh hell_ , the snake cursed softly and immediately started crawling onto Itachi. _The trouble with you two, honestly._

 

Sasuke rinsed the cloth again and again dragged it slowly over the heated skin on Itachi’s neck and upper chest, carefully avoiding the place where the already-faintly glowing snake was working on healing his brother.

 

“Why is he sick again?” Sasuke asked, slowly and methodically cooling his brother’s body with the wet cloth. His fingers pruned up, but he could see the difference in the tension of Itachi’s body.

 

 _The infection is too wide spread. It seems that whenever I manage to extinguish it in one place, it rises up somewhere else,_ Kanaye said slowly, obviously distracted by what he was doing.

 

“You told me you could heal him!”

 

The snake sighed.

 

 _Not without surgery, it seems. If somebody was good enough to remove all the damaged tissue while I was keeping a portion clean of the infection...I am sure I could rebuild his lungs completely_ , Kanaye said finally, not happy to admit he needed the human’s help at all.

 

“I’m guessing that would need a very skilled surgeon,” Sasuke wondered, wetting the cloth again.

 

 _A whole team. And a hospital preferably. Familiarity with working with summons too_ , Kanaye said musingly.

 

Sasuke only harrumped quietly, all too aware of the fact he had access to none of those things.

 

 

They spent hours together with Kanaye, trying to bring the fever down. When finally the bared chest he’d been bathing with cold water was covered in goosebumps, Kanaye sighed.

 

 _That’s all I can do for now. Call me tommorrow, I will continue,_ said the snake before puffing out.

 

Sasuke could almost feel the approaching dawn in his bones. He was tired, his body aching in that unspecified way prolonged exhaustion and lack of sleep brought. He was too tired to set up his own tent, so he just put the bowl of water away and laid down beside Itachi. This close, he could smell the sickly scent of fever that overlay the painfully familiar scent of his brother. It made his chest go tight and his throat almost too dry from the swell of emotion it evoked. The night was quiet and still, but his heart was hammering.

 

As he shifted to lay his head on Itachi’s shoulder, he felt something inside him grow. His eyes burned and he felt…things he couldn’t even name. Fear, excitation, longing, a thousand other things better left unnamed.

 

For the first time that night he could tell that Itachi’s awareness had shifted.

 

His brother was waking up.

 

“Sasuke,” Itachi’s voice was dry, cracked.

 

Something twisted painfully in Sasuke at hearing Itachi address him.

 

“Don’t speak,” he murmured aiming for demanding and managing only plaintive. Sasuke pressed his face into the bony shoulder, inhaling the both familiar and alien smell, and dug his fingers into Itachi’s side. “Please.”

 

His brother shifted his face towards him, his lips opening to let out words Sasuke was sure he couldn’t hear. It hurt to breathe, to even think, it was too much and not enough and Sasuke was left floundering in a situation he didn’t know how to deal with.

 

When Itachi drew breath to speak, Sasuke surged up, pressing his lips to the corner of Itachi’s mouth. He could feel his brother’s lips, slightly parted, and pressed harder, desperate, for what, he didn’t know.

 

Itachi stilled under his touch as if bound, restrained in a way Sasuke never knew his brother could be.

 

“Hush,” he murmured breaking the contact. This close, Sasuke could smell Itachi’s breath, feel the lingering heat of the fever…he could touch that warm body and smooth skin in a way he wasn’t allowed since being a very small child. It filled him with something raw and vicious, something inexplicable and unrestrained, impossible to name.

 

He leaned over his brother again, resting half his weight on top of him, used his hand to touch that pale cheek, trace where the bandages ended and skin started, and pressed his lips to the dry ones of his brother’s again.

 

Itachi’s lips were very soft, thin and very dry. As he ran his tongue over the damaged flesh Sasuke couldn’t help but marvel that someone so dangerous, so cold, so cruel could be this vulnerable. It defied logic, somehow, that Itachi could be this.. fragile. That his all-powerful, all-knowing older brother could be this husk of a man, so beautiful it hurt, and so vulnerable it drove Sasuke mad.

 

He shifted again, lying down half on top of Itachi, and pressed his face into the crook of his brother’s neck. His scent was stronger there, the heat of his body warming Sasuke’s cold cheeks and the almost frozen tip of his nose.

 

He fell asleep to the steady jump of Itachi’s pulse under his cheek, the steady, if shallow breaths expanding the chest under him, and total silence.

 

*          *          *

 

_No_

 

Itachi tilted his head at the three-feet-long, mud-brown snake and sighed. He wasn’t expecting this much resistance. He sat down on the grassy patch of land on which he was standing and settled in for some more serious negotiating. Yuuta hadn’t been this obstinate before. A mouse was usually enough to convince him to cooperate.

 

“It’s just a short workout,” Itachi tried again. “I will give you a rat, even.”

 

 _Sasuke said no weapons. He said to rest,_ the snake insisted.

 

“Yuuta,” Itachi said as gently as he knew how. “I am bored. Severely bored. I have been stuck in this camp for weeks already with nothing to do.”

 

The snake shrunk back, obviously torn.

 

Itachi had just opened his his mouth to bargain some more when he felt the change in his surroundings. The poorly-hidden intent prickled his skin in warning. For years his crows had been his second pair of eyes, always there to warn him. It seemed he got careless without them.

 

He uncrossed his legs, taking stock of his chakra reserves. They were as abysmally low as always, hovering barely above total exhaustion.

 

His muscles burned when he rolled to the right, boosting his speed and twisting so that he rolled to his feet in a way Shisui had showed him so many years ago, ending up facing the threat.

 

“Heh, I always wondered what was so special about you that Sasuke chased you halfway around the world?” The voice was young, brash, arrogant. Itachi was too experienced a fighter not to notice that while the words suggested empty aggression, simple arrogance of youth, his attacker’s chakra was suspiciously well controlled and his intent smothered enough that Itachi couldn’t judge how serious about the fight his opponent was.

 

As weak as he was, as little muscle mass as he had retained since his forced coma, avoiding the next attack was almost easy, the blade missing him by a wide enough margin that he barely felt the displaced air.

 

The swordsman was skilled enough that although the last swing came fast and hard, he checked the move quickly enough that the massive sword didn’t plow into the ground, but changed direction to slash sideways at Itachi again.

 

Instead of retreating from what he guessed was an unfairly large weapon, Itachi closed in. Using his superior skill, he surged under the man’s guard and set his arm to connect with his attacker's arm. He slid his forearm down as soon as he felt flesh meet flesh and closed his fingers around a surprisingly thin wrist. He more felt than heard the way his attacker startled. Knowing he couldn’t outlast him in his current condition and having no weapons, Itachi decided to rush to the offensive. Instead of retreating, he twisted his body, his lungs giving him a warning spasm as he took a deeper breath to prepare a blow that would drop his opponent. Making sure to keep the captured sword arm still, he focused what little chakra he had into his first and aimed for one of the main tenketsu points.

 

The fist connected, but in the instant it touched flesh, suddenly there wasn’t flesh there any more. He smelled the water even before he heard the splash of displaced liquid. His fist went through the opponent without any resistance.

 

Body modification technique.

 

He could already feel the water around his fist hardening, changing its constitution, and he released the man’s other arm to fee his own, making a hasty seal and generating just enough electric current to give his opponent a shock and drop down. Itachi rolled away quickly, his muscles screaming bloody murder at him, and got to his feet jumping as far away as he could with his body already failing him, his lungs seizing and making it difficult to breathe.

 

“Damn, you are fast,” his attacker said, sounding reluctantly impressed. “But try getting away from this!”

 

Itachi could feel a soft change in the air, a force that stirred between them and realised that his attacker was readying a jutsu he couldn’t see.

 

He only realized he was trying to redirect his own miniscule chakra to his eyes, a habit of a lifetime, when his left cheekbone exploded in pain and the smell of copper attacked his nose. He felt his legs giving out at the same time as whatever power his attacker was gathering crested.

 

He was not going to evade this attack, he didn’t even have enough chakra to augment his organs when another rush of power, the rush of a wall of fire sliced between them.

 

“Suigetsu.” It was Sasuke’s voice coming at the heels of the fire jutsu, murderously cold. “What do you think you are doing?” His brother sounded…eerily calm, but even as exhausted as Itachi was, he could sense the frighteningly malicious chakra whipping around him, barely controlled.

 

“Eh, just wanting to see what all this hype was about, that’s all,” The man, boy really, answered.

 

One of his brother's new teammates.

 

It was reassuring somehow that he anticipated the second fire technique his brother threw at his unrepentant colleague, which still surprised Suigetsu, judging by the yelp and the curse that followed the roar of fire.

 

A burst of heated mist filled the small clearing, so Itachi guessed the swordsman had used one of his water techniques to guard against his younger brother’s temper.

 

“Oi!” the swordsman yelled, outraged. “What did I tell you about boiling the water user!”

 

“What are you even doing here?” Sasuke ground out, his voice remarkably dropping even more. From the direction of his voice and the sense of his powerful chakra, Itachi judged Sasuke was standing directly in front of him.

 

 _Shielding_ him.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to add a chapter because this one turned out too long. The ending soon, half of it is already done.

“Are you all right?” Sasuke’s voice was oddly hesitant, sounding uncomfortably young on somebody this powerful.

 

Itachi thought of the previous night, of his brother touching him in that desperate way. All he ever wanted for Sasuke was for him to be strong enough to be free of manipulation, to be a force of his own. Itachi did everything he could to give him motivation to become such.

 

It was dawning on him now, that in doing that, he took something important from Sasuke, too.

 

“Yes,” Itachi answered belatedly, feeling the awkwardness between them mount.

 

“A lie,” Sasuke said softly, moving closer. Itachi didn't flinch when he felt Sasuke touch his cheek, smearing the blood there and releasing more of the sharp, coppery scent.

 

He reached out to catch Sasuke’s wrist, not forcing him away, just holding.

 

“It’s just the damaged nerves. They must have healed wrong.”

 

Itachi could feel the sudden tension in his brother as clearly as if he could see him.

 

“What?” There was something odd in Sasuke’s voice.

 

“When you removed my eyes,” Itachi said calmly, fairly perplexed at why he had to explain anything at all. “I am not used to them being gone and instinctively divert chakra to them. The pain and bleeding must be caused by that.”

 

The silence from Sasuke was so heavy, Itachi wondered if there was something he was missing?

 

With a curse and a forcefully exhaled breath, Sasuke caught Itachi’s face between his hands and hissed in a strangely strangled voice:

 

“Why would I take your eyes?”

 

Still lost, Itachi tried to understand what was upsetting his brother so.

 

“You knew it was the only way to stop the degeneration. You read the old tablet, you knew what to do.”

 

Sasuke’s hands tightened almost painfully on Itachi’s face. His voice was tightly controlled as he spoke.

 

“You eyes are still yours. After our fight you died. More than once. It caused your eyes to start spontaneously evolving. It was pulling too much chakra from your system, more than the snakes or I could replace, and your body was too exhausted to generate chakra on its own. Kanaye decided to seal them away for now. You still have your eyes, they are just sealed.”

 

Even through the shock of hearing all his assumptions had been wrong, Itachi was aware of the tremors in his brother’s hands. “You thought…?” it sounded as if Sasuke had choked on his words. “I would rather cut my own eyes out,” Sasuke hissed fiercely, and Itachi didn’t wait any longer.

 

He stepped forward and gathered his enraged, trembling sibling in his arms, still reeling from the knowledge that he still had his eyes.

 

*          *          *

 

Shisui hated Itachi Uchiha long before he ever met him.

 

Shisui watched the kid, the Uchiha heir, and wondered just what was so special about him? Shisui was the fastest, most talented ninja in his generation. He’d already had made a name for himself, Shisui do, the Body Flicker. He was said to be as fast as the Yellow Flash. Yet this little upstart, this _kid_ , was the genius of the Uchiha clan? Just because he was the son of the Clan Head he had to be the best? Shisui was _already_ the best of them, but he was just a branch kid, his father barely a chuunin and mother a civilian.

 

And now this little farce. He’d been told to come and spar with Itachi, while his father and a few Elders watched. What for? Shisui didn’t know. If they expected him to throw this match to please the Elders or Fugaku, they would be sorely disappointed.

 

Shisui would never be a Clan Head, he probably would never be anything more than he was already because the spotlight was reserved for the kid kneeling in front of him, stone-faced and so damned privileged. Shisui would use this little farce to show them how good he was, to show them how much better than their praised heir he was.

 

Rising to his feet at Fugaku’s signal, Shisui bowed to the kid, only as little as he could get away with, and pulled out his kunai. He guessed it wouldn’t take long.

 

As soon as Shisui heard the signal, he rushed the kid, hoping to humiliate him with an instant defeat. There were very few who could even track his movement, and even fewer who could defend against him.

 

Since the kid hadn’t activated his sharingan yet, neither had Shisui. It would hurt the kid’s pride even more if Shisui were to get him even without the sharingan.

 

Itachi evaded.

 

They ended up in a mirror position to how they’d started, a small lock of Itachi’s hair floating down to the floor between them, where Shisui had cut it with his kunai.

 

He looked at the heir, for the first time actually _looked_ at the kid.

 

Itachi was small for his age, but his face had already started to lose the childish baby fat. At eight he was built delicate as a waif, thin limbs and a deceptively small body. His face was doll-like, beautiful. Porcelain white, with large dark eyes, he was a splitting image of his mother; none of his father’s power in his frame.

 

But he was just as blank, as cold as Fugaku.

 

Shifting his stance, Shisui let loose with a combo of kicks and lightning fast jabs that the kid had no chance of evading. He didn’t, but Shisui could see in the slight furrow of his brows that Itachi had realised it even before the first hit connected.

 

Itachi avoided only half of the blows, but those he sustained he managed to block enough to avoid serious damage. The last, desperate roll that took him under one of the more vicious of Shisui’s kicks, slammed him into the wall. The kid was aware of his body enough to use that unexpected obstacle to pull himself into standing position again.

 

Shisui smirked when he saw that tell tale crimson of Itachi’s eyes.

 

He’d forced the heir to activate his sharingan first.

 

With mocking slowness, he let his own sharingan flare to life, flooding the world with blood-red color and slowing all motion into a molasses pace.

 

Frankly, it didn’t take long after that. Itachi put up a fight, a very good fight actually, for being only eight years old; much better than most of the clan. He was still too slow, though. Shisui was smart enough, grown up enough to realise that if it had been a serious, life-or-death fight, with the full use of ninjutsu, they would have been pretty evenly matched. He could sense that certain kind of calm detachment that was a hallmark of truly dangerous ninjutsu users. This, however, was a purely taijutsu match, and Shusui had the heir on his back, both arms immobilized under his knees, and a knifepoint pressed into his neck in minutes.

 

Panting, he looked into crimson eyes, so like his own, eager on gloating over his superiority. Shisui’s words stuck bitterly in his throat though, the first moment he met the kid’s eyes.

 

Instead of pique, anger, and frustration, some humiliation maybe, all he saw was undisguised wonder.

 

Itachi Uchiha, with one cheek already bruising spectacularly, was staring at him with wide, awed eyes. Like he was thrilled, pleased as a peach, to be beaten, defeated by somebody.

 

With that stoic, blank mask completely discarded, Itachi looked even younger than his eight years.

 

“You are _fast_ ,” the Uchiha heir breathed, his wide eyes full of wonder.

 

Shisui let his kunai fall, not waiting for an official end to the match, feeling like the biggest jerk in the whole of Fire Country.

 

“You lost,” Shisui muttered, hoping to egg the kid into proving he was just an arrogant, over-privileged brat like Shisui believed him to be, or at least just something to make him feel less like a total tool.

 

The kid furrowed his brows momentarily, making Shisui’s heart beat in validation before Itachi opened his mouth again.

 

“Oh, that. Yes.” He nodded even, as if agreeing with himself. “I knew I would. I’ve seen you train before.” He said it as if it was so normal, so matter-of-fact. “I knew I would lose, but it was worth it to see you fight seriously.”

 

He was _nothing_ like Fugaku.

 

Shisui sat back, both arms limp at his side and laughed.

 

This kid, disarmed and immobilized before him, completely lost the match. And yet Shisui, the unquestionable winner, felt not only completely defeated, but downright _outclassed_.

 

*          *          *

 

 

“I want the gentle older brother I adored back,” Sasuke murmured pressing closer, making Itachi realize that his younger brother was actually not only taller but also heavier than him. Somewhere along the way Sasuke outgrew Itachi’s perspective of him. “I want back the me that knew how to love you unconditionally.” It was almost painful, how much Itachi wanted to have his sight back right then. There was something so wretched in Sasuke’s quiet voice, he felt lost.

 

His younger brother pressed his forehead to Itachi’s, so close he could feel the other’s breath on his lips, the chill of his skin and the tension thrumming through that too skinny yet still powerful frame.

 

“Sasuke.” Itachi hesitated, not sure what to say, how to offer comfort. He wanted to apologize, but those words wouldn't help at all. Wanted to promise to give Sasuke anything he wanted, but his brother only wanted thing that no one could give. He wanted to give comfort, but he didn’t know how to anymore.

 

*          *          *

 

“ _We’re being followed by somebody,”_ Sasuke said, extending his arm down so that Hajime could slither to the ground. “ _Kill him_ ,” he ordered.

 

 _It’s always kill him, kill them,_ Hajim grumbled. _You could say something different from time to time, you know?_

 

Sasuke twitched. Somehow, he was sure this sudden snarky attitude his snakes had adopted was totally Itachi’s fault. Not only was he buying them off by feeding them mice (and Sasuke didn’t quite dare ask _where_ he got the mice from), Itachi was also teaching them _things_.

 

Sasuke gave his snake a red-eyed glare.

 

“ _Find the man following us,_ ” he enunciated slowly, “ _and then kill him!_ ”

 

Hajime considered this, opening and closing his hood thoughtfully.

 

 _That’s at least progress_ , the snake eventually decided and started slithering into the tall, dry grass.

 

Sasuke glared, with all his might, hoping to make the snake’s skin crawl from the pure force of his irritation.

 

 _FoolishLittleBrother!_ the call came from the already-invisible snake, full of chortling amusement.

 

Somehow in the midst of the veritable hell he was forced to live through, Sasuke forgot that his older brother’s sense of humor was a _menace_.

 

*          *          *

 

Itachi was on the edge of sleep when he felt Sasuke near the camp, his chakra cold, malicious, and strangely agitated.

 

There was no question of going back to sleep now that he’d felt his brother. Lying quietly in the ever-present darkness, Itachi strained his senses to follow Sasuke. He could feel the cautious flare of his chakra and then an equally restrained flare from Juugo, obviously a wordless password between the two team members. He wondered if Sasuke realised just how well Juugo had to know Sasuke and his chakra to be able to recognize it from just that tiny flare. Itachi wasn’t sure how much of the youngest Uchiha detachment was a front and how much was true.

 

For the next hour he could feel Sasuke moving around the camp, and even though Itachi had started learning more about the camp itself, it wasn’t enough to guess what his brother was doing.

 

When Itachi finally heard the tent flap moving, he turned towards the sound. He debated getting up, or at least sitting up before Sasuke came in, but the fact that his brother always waited till he thought Itachi was asleep before coming to him was a clue Itachi couldn’t ignore.

 

“Sasuke…,” he started, hoping to get his brother talking but Sasuke moved quickly and quietly, like any good ninja, and had his palm against Itachi’s lips in a heartbeat.

 

“Hush,” murmured his younger brother, pulling the blanket away and lying down beside Itachi. He wriggled closer, one arm closing on Itachi’s nearest arm and other thrown over his chest.

 

Just as he got enough breath to try talking again, there was another rustle of the tent flap.

 

Judging by the light footsteps, it was one of the women from the camp.

 

“Itachi-san,” came the polite, quiet greeting.

 

It was Chiasa, one of the older ones, closer to his age than Sasuke’s. She had enough training to control and refine her chakra, but not enough to ever be considered a ninja. Orochimaru wanted his breeding stock to pass to their children the largest possible reserves of chakra, but to stay easily controllable in the meantime.

 

This made it easy to live near them; they knew enough about ninja to be respectful and cautious, but never made the kind of ignorant mistakes civilians did.

 

He could smell Sasuke’s scent, his brother pressed closely to his side, oddly tense. It distracted him enough that he barely paid any attention to Chiasa kneeling beside him and touching his chest.

 

“It’s time,” Sasuke whispered against the skin of his neck, his brother’s cool lips almost brushing the skin.

 

Before Itachi had time to ask, he twitched violently when he felt Chiasa’s hands on the ties of his sleep pants. She didn’t give him time to protest as she started to unfasten them with quick movements.

 

Itachi wanted to stop her, but before he lifted the arm not held by Sasuke, his brother reached over his torso, snake fast, and clamped his other arm, forcing him still.

 

Chiasa worked fast, probably more than aware of Itachi’s shock. As soon as she had his pants open, he felt the puff of warm and moist air, a gentle hand taking hold of his penis. Itachi had to clench his teeth and hiss out a stunned breath through his nose as she took him in her mouth.

 

“Why?” _Why him? Why not Sasuke?_ He begged, forcing himself to remain still, to control his body’s unwilling reaction to stimuli. Sex was never something he was overly interested in, but like everyone else, he hit puberty eventually and had visited a whorehouse or two. It was easier somehow, to just pay for services. If nothing else, he’d been able to predict exactly why and what the other person was going to do. Itachi couldn't imagine doing it with somebody who could prove to be a threat to him. And since he was a missing nin, everybody was a threat.

 

Sasuke tightened his grip on Itachi. It was eerie, feeling the woman go down on him and feeling his brother's body plastered all along his side, hearing the rustle of rough cloth over the blankets and his uneven breathing.

 

Susuke brother exhaled a sharp, oddly irritated sounding breath.

 

“I let a deity from the land of the dead inject part of her spirit into my body to change me so that I could then travel to a place halfway between life and death and meet her directly.” Sasuke’s voice was low, and gravelly, an ugly edge clinging to his words. “I went to her.” Sasuke swallowed suddenly, his throat clicking dryly, “and I lay with her so that she could give birth to a new generation of offspring. I don’t have a contract with my Snake Clan, because they were born from my body and my soul.” His brother panted against his neck, as if recovering after horrible effort. Itachi wondered if Sasuke had ever told this to anybody. “Do you even want to speculate, what kind of offspring my body would create now?”

 

The way he said the word _offspring_ was so full of loathing and disgust, he might as well have said _monster_.

 

Itachi wanted to say something, to ease the self disgust, but it was getting hard to focus. He was hard now, Chiasa’s efforts working. He kept his teeth clenched to keep in any embarrassing sounds, but he was already panting. He knew he tended to forget to take care of his body, but it was ridiculous how affected he was right now.

 

Sasuke, having obviously decided that Itachi wouldn’t fight him about this any more, pressed closer, his lips almost accidentally brushing Itachi’s neck. They were dry and cracked and somehow, very oddly, vulnerable. His younger brother was all fierce power, unbreakable will and all-encompassing determination. That any part of him would be this fragile twisted painfully in Itachi’s stomach.

 

Itachi was completely hard now, Chiasa’s mouth bringing him all the closer to orgasm. His heart was pounding and his lips were dry. Sasuke was so close, his breath was fanning over Itachi’s face on every shaky exhale. Every time Itachi moistened his lips, he could almost taste his brother there. Beneath the tension and the clothes, he could feel Sasuke was hard too, his cock pressing into Itachi’s hip. His brother wasn’t doing anything more than just lying close, but Itachi just couldn’t ignore him.

 

The woman stopped suddenly, raising her head from Itachi’s lap. The shock of cold mountain air was like a slap in the face, making him all the more aware of the vicious heat in his cheeks. Itachi wished he could see her then, as he was too distracted to grasp the meaning of the rustling he heard until he felt her rising over him.

 

The woman was quick and efficient, when she straddled him and grasped his cock to guide it inside her.

 

Itachi made a helpless kind of sound as she sank down, enveloping him in wet, tight heat. Itachi clenched his hands hard at his sides, his hips pushing up almost without his volition. It felt incredibly good, probably because his body was starved both for contact as well as for pleasure of any kind, and that made him lose focus even more. Everything became a haze of overlapping sensations. The smell of Chiasa sweat, the wet sound of their coupling, the burn in his muscles as he strained not to thrust up, the sound of panting breaths, his or Sasuke’s he didn’t know.

 

Itachi was already so close to orgasm, it was both too much and not enough. He felt as if he was standing on the very edge of a cliff, the closeness of his brother both distracting and driving home just how much everything had changed.

 

With a gasp and a shudder, Itachi turned to his brother, their lips meeting almost by chance, and locking in a fierce kiss. He felt Sasuke thread his hand into his hair, deepening the kiss almost at the same time as Itachi’s starved-for-affection body gave up and he shuddered helplessly in orgasm, spilling his release into the unseen woman.

 

Itachi drifted for a moment, aware only of his pounding heart and the way Sasuke kept stroking his hair gently, soothing him.

 

When Itachi had come back to himself, Chiasa was gone and Sasuke was tucked into his side again, quiet and peaceful.

 

They slept like that, close, entwined and more peaceful than they had been in a long time.

 

*          *          *

 

Itachi wished he could see Juugo. His chakra was much too controlled for Itachi to guess his mood from it, but some inner instinct told him Juugo was uncomfortable. It was as if he could smell the possibility of violence in the air even if Juugo showed no outward sign of it.

 

“Juugo,” Itachi greeted finally, tired of waiting.

 

“Itachi-san,” Juugo responded, sounding almost relieved. “I…need you to help with something.”

 

Itachi frowned, hearing something odd in Juugo’s voice.

 

“Why me?” he pressed.

 

“Because Sasuke left you in charge when he and Suigetsu left for their mission yesterday.”

 

Itachi allowed himself a long moment of confusion. Funny, but he was sure he was more of a prisoner than anything else here. Perhaps he didn’t understand his brother as well as he thought he did.

 

“I need you to come with me to meet someone.”

 

Mostly due to lack of anything else to do, Juugo agreed. Want it or not, Sasuke was determined to kick Itachi out of his comfortable state of passive existence.

 

Itachi smelled the woman before he sensed her. Juugo was very good at controlling his chakra but this woman was outstanding. This kind of control wasn’t possible for people with large reserves, but with enough talent and training, a sensor type could completely mask his chakra. Like this woman.

 

Karin, the last of Sasuke’s teammates.

 

“Karin,” Juugo called, something both cautious and warning in the tone of his voice. Itachi was sure that if he could see them, he could catch a wealth of unspoken communication between them.

 

Itachi was quiet, waiting for the woman to act.

 

“I will not do what the other women promised to do!” she exclaimed fiercely, but her voice was trembling. To Itachi she sounded young and scared. He wondered if he’d ever been this vulnerable.

 

Itachi said nothing, not betraying his surprise that Karin even knew what was going on in the camp. She must be a remarkably good sensor type to be able to spy on the camp without him noticing till now.

 

Too good.

 

She could be a threat, he realised, and if she proved to be hostile, she would need to be removed.

 

That was Itachi’s role here. To be the judge, and if necessary the executioner too.

 

Itachi’s estimation of Juugo rose a notch again. The boy was much more intelligent than anybody gave him credit for, having grasped all implications of Karin’s presence so quickly.

It was Karin who broke first under the silence.

 

“I want to come back,” she admitted, her voice lowering to a soft murmur.

 

Itachi considered what he knew of Sasuke’s teammates. Karin had spent most of her life with Orochimaru, yet besides her overblown fixation with Sasuke’s looks, she seemed remarkably well adjusted, at least much more so than his brother. It wouldn’t harm his brother to have someone as irreverent as her around, to balance things out.

 

“Did Sasuke ever tell you to leave?” Itachi asked rhetorically, already knowing the answer. Sasuke didn’t ask them to follow him, and he was sure Sasuke didn’t tell any of them to leave.

 

He would tell Juugo to watch her closely for a while, but she seemed honest enough. After so long with Orochimaru, Karin had probably realised that there were very few places she could go to where she wouldn’t be considered an enemy on sight. In the end, Orochimaru had no allies, only enemies, and those under his command were now receiving punishment destined for their master.

 

She was too high up in Orochimaru’s hierarchy to ever be free again, and it seemed she realised it now.

 

He turned to leave but stopped at a plaintive little _cold_ that echoed in his mind. One of the younger snakes, Yuuta.

 

None of the snakes liked Sasuke’s choice of camp location. The cold nights, the misty and brisk morning were hated with a passion amongst the Snake Clan. A few days ago Mirai asked if she could ride inside his shirt when it was cold outside, to use his body heat. It didn’t take long for the others to get the same idea. Now it was very rare for Itachi to have fewer than one snake curled inside his shirt, stealing his body heat.

 

Sasuke would laugh himself sick, probably, at how soft Itachi was on his snakes. He bent down, extending his hand and not flinching when he felt a small, cool body slither quickly up his arm, heading for the collar of his shirt.

 

Since he already had Mirai in there, the siblings engaged in a brief hissing match. But before he threw them both out, they seemed to come to an agreement and retreated, somewhat sullenly, to different sides.

 

It itched like _crazy_.

 

As he left, he heard Juugo tell Karin he would show her where to set up her tent.

 

 

*          *          *

 

“Why won’t you talk to me? You only ever send your snakes to convey your messages,” Itachi accused his brother, after managing to track him down in the woods again. It irked him that Sasuke only came to him at night, touched him when he invited the women in, kissed him, and then made sure to be gone before dawn, just leaving money, supplies and sometimes instructions with Juugo. All he knew of what was happening was through Kanaye or Hajime who came personally to talk to him or one of the younger snakes that Sasuke often left in the camp. Itachi liked them, liked teaching them, but didn’t like how Sasuke used them as an excuse to avoid him.

 

“How can I ever say anything to you with that seal on you?!” Sasuke exploded suddenly.

 

Itachi moved as fast as ever, already so much stronger than he had been in years. The first blow landed square on Sasuke’s stomach, violently forcing the air out of his brother. Pivoting on his leg Itachi turned a perfect roundhouse kick, gaining as much momentum as his mass allowed. When his leg connected with his brother’s body, Sasuke had already recovered enough from the surprise of the attack to raise a guard, but not enough to counter the sheer force of the kick. Itachi knew it would hurt, the new lessons always hurt, but they took best then. It was how he was trained when he was small. All new teachers were encouraged by his father to land a blow on him until he learned how to evade or block them.

 

Itachi only ever let them hit him the one time.

 

The younger Uchiha had flown back until he hit the nearest tree with a satisfying thump. If he hadn’t been a ninja, if he hadn’t managed to augment his body with chakra in that split second of awareness between blows, he would have most probably been dead now, his spine shattered, at the very least.

 

“It’s pitiful that I understand your snakes better than you do,” Itachi said quietly, standing still, facing his brother.

 

“If you can…” Sasuke trailed off, the unspoken _say no_ loud and clear, his words cracking like dry skin, “...then why?” He seemed so bewildered, so _young_.

 

Itachi approached his brother, still sitting under the tree where he’d fallen, and knelt down in front of him, reaching up to take Sasuke’s face in his hands.

 

“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

 

Stunned, Sasuke was pliant in his hands, opening his mouth with a gasp when Itachi kissed him.

 

Sexuality had always been little alien to Itachi, always odd and uncomfortable. As pretty as he had been as a child, and as high a position he’d held, unwanted sexual advances were a norm rather than a rarity. This had taught Itachi to lock that part of him away, until it became a habit.

 

He kissed as gently and firmly as he knew how, tasting blood in Sasuke’s mouth, trying to convey in his movements what he never could in his words. He could feel the pale lips under his become softer, more pliable, the mouth opening to him in a gentle acceptance that Sasuke could not admit otherwise.

 

“That seal is not for me.” Trying to convey the scope of the thing Mirai had granted Sasuke, just how wise the tiny snake was.

 

Sasuke surged up into the kiss suddenly, the move fueled partly by pain, partly by anger and that wretched thing that had become of his childhood love for Itachi.

 

It seemed like hours passed with them sitting close and still. Just being, in a way neither of them had been allowed to before.

 

“What do you want?” Itachi asked gently, stroking gentle fingers through his brother’s bristling hair.

 

“Want?” Sasuke asked, pronouncing the word as if it was dirty somehow, incomprehensive. “I gave up so many things I cared about I have forgotten what it is to want something.” His voice was low and steady, if quiet. “Somehow, somewhere, everything became so grey, and I got caught up in it.”

 

“I will have my revenge on Danzou. I will have my clan rebuilt. I will have you by my side.” Itachi’s younger brother shifted, his clothes rustling gently. “I didn’t want to become this cold,” he whispered, sounding almost ashamed.

 

“I thought it would make you stronger.” Itachi admitted, stunned by how strong yet fragile his brother had become, how far the damage ran.

 

“I want to know how to want again.”

 

 _Show me_ , was unspoken between them, but how could Itachi do that when it was so hard to face the fact of simply being alive?

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I officially stopped pretending that I know how long this story takes. There isn't much left to write but... we will see. Two chapters at the very least, probably more though...  
> Also for those who are a fan, go and google phrase : "Naruto art by Lily" and the most wonderful fanart ever created. This is how I see Itachi, this is the very reason for this fic.

It was Juugo’s birds that warned him of danger. Sasuke was away so much, Itachi took it upon himself to create different security strategies. As unused as he was to living among people, Itachi tended to spend as much time away from the camp as possible too. The lack of sight, his lungs that teetered on the edge of relapse, it all forced him to stay close. Besides, he felt the camp needed more protection anyway. The longer they stayed, the more probable it became that somebody would discover them. Diluted it may be, but bloodline theft was still a concern. There would be more than enough parties interested in kidnapping the women or children in the hopes their children would have the Sharingan. Especially now that some of the women might be pregnant with Itachi’s children. 

The chakra on the edge of his senses was painfully familiar though.

_Hoshigaki Kisame._

It was fitting, somehow, that Akatsuki sent his former partner for him.

He felt his ex-partner change course, heading straight for him. The lack of sight was going to be a problem; Kisame was too dangerous an opponent to underestimate. 

The Kiri nin was soundless when he landed on the edge of the clearing, Itachi only sensing him because he’d spent the better part of a decade in his company.

Itachi moved deeper into the clearing, getting as far away from the water as possible without being too obvious about it. Kisame was going to be a challenge enough, without giving him too much of an advantage with the body of water nearby.

“Don’t start this fight Kisame,” Itachi warned gently. “You won’t like what I will do when I win.”

“Always so sure of yourself, Itachi-san,” the kiri missing nin wondered, pulling his sword from his back and loosening the bandages covering it. Blind or not, it was Itachi Uchiha he was going to fight. “You can be either a member of Akatsuki, or dead. Besides, I would love to see you finally get serious about a fight.”

“You can still back out, Kisame.”

“Blinded and tamed” Kisame mocked, releasing his murderous aura. “Is this really how you want to end up?” The Akatsuki member opened his cloak and threw it aside, cautious of the speed Itachi was capable of. “Once I give you proper farewell I will hike up into that cosy camp north of here and kill everyone there for trying to tame you so.”

Itachi shifted, missing his eyes with a fierce ache. Kisame was going to be hard to fight, his chakra-stealing sword was just a beginning. For a brief second, Itachi even considered letting Kisame kill him, but the sudden burn in his bones, the promise of absolute agony, was warning enough that he finally found one of the triggers for the seal. Mirai was too smart for something so young, her seal responding to true desires, not to words. Sasuke wanted him alive, so alive he would stay.

His brother.

When he thought of the odd, clumsy way Sasuke was feeling his way back to life, something clenched in his chest. The camp consisting of women and children, all related to the Uchiha, some probably already pregnant with his children… It shocked him really, how fiercely he wanted to protect it all. As clumsy and strange as it seemed, it was a promise of a new life. Not one he wanted for Sasuke, but not a worse one necessarily.

Serious about fighting now, Itachi let himself become cold. The last time he became emotional while fighting was when he was forced to kill his own family. Ever since, each fight only left him colder. Even now, warmed as he was by Sasuke’s constant expression of love, slipping into that coldness felt as natural as breathing.

In his current state, even as strong as he felt in comparison to before, dueling Kisame was not a good idea. He spent years partnered with the Kiri ninja and was more than aware of how skilled, how dangerous that man was with or without that wretched sword.

If he wanted to win, he was going to be fast and underhanded, slipping under his ex-partner’s guard and delivering the fatal blow as soon as possible, before Kisame realized that Itachi never fought for the fight’s sake.

Only to win.

Itachi eased one kunai into his hand, hiding most of the blade inside his sleeve. No doubt Kisame would assume he was armed, even though he couldn’t see the weapon. As disadvantaged as he was without the use of his eyes, Itachi had to be quick. He had only once chance before Kisame stopped unconsciously underestimating him.

Since his former partner had already prepared to fight and had let out his chakra in hopes of intimidating Itachi, he had the means to actually track the man.

His speed was never a match for Shisui, but it was more than most people could counter. Itachi exploded into movement, surprising Kisame with a head on attack.

Kisame moved to block, his huge frame moving faster than expected for someone of his size, but Itachi never intended to actually connect. Kisame was a very tall man, which meant he needed to keep his legs spread more widely to lower his centre of gravity and keep his balance. Counting on that, Itachi tilted back halfway through his charge, letting his feet lose traction and go into a slide. The never truly dry forest floor was more than enough help, letting him slide fast and unexpectedly between Kisame’s legs. As soon as Itachi was between the man’s legs, he slashed at the flesh closest to him with his kunai. It wasn’t a serious wound, wouldn’t even slow Kisame down, but it would ensure Kisame stayed focused solely on Itachi.

The momentum of his slide carried Itachi away fast enough that Kisame had no chance of retaliating. When Itachi felt the trunk of a tree hit his feet, he changed his own centre of gravity, allowing his momentum to bring him fluidly into a standing position. One twist of his foot, and braced on the tree, he was back facing Kisame, and sprinting for his unprotected back.

The Kiri nin managed to, impossibly, twist his body enough to block Itachi’s strike to his neck. However, in doing so, he facilitated his own defeat.

Itachi couldn’t see it, but he heard the sharp surprised inhalation from Kisame before the man’s chakra shut down completely, and he fell to the ground, instantly unconscious.

 _I did good?_ The small voice in his head asked. _You told me to bite if you offered somebody the chance to back off twice_ , the little snake added defensively.

Itachi couldn’t feel nor hear Mirai, and neither could Kisame.

“You were perfect,” Itachi praised, approaching the fallen form cautiously.

He had warned Kisame.

* * *

 

Sasuke trailed behind Suigetsu and Karin, looking at the market stalls boasting sweets of different kinds. They were on a supply run for the camp with their shopping list carefully designed to get the most food and necessary equipment for the money they had. Sweets were really not something included. Personally, Sasuke hated sweet desserts, Suigetsu was a firm believer in a fluid diet, and Karin was unbelievably picky about what she would eat. There was no one to insist on Sasuke buying some for the rest of the camp.

Sasuke remembered how Itachi loved sweets when they were children.

With a sigh, he stopped at the stall selling candies and prepared to waste some money. After all, there were kids in the camp, and some of them were bound to like sweets. Somehow he doubted they had got to have any while living in Orochimaru’s labs. 

He’d just paid for his purchases and hooked them on his belt, when the pain hit. With a barely muffled shout, Sasuke fell to his knees, both hands over his ears. They were ringing painfully, making him dizzy.

Something was pushing its way inside him, it felt alien, wrong in his mind, invading. Like Orochimaru. Sasuke fought it, gritting his teeth and _pushing_ the foreign presence out.

It hurt.

It hurt somewhere deep, somewhere he couldn’t name and couldn’t fight, which only made him more desperate to be _rid_ of that invasion.

With a hoarse scream, he dug his fingers into the dry ground and resisted with all of the stubbornness he was capable off, willing to die rather than let anybody else into his mind. Between Orochimaru and Mother Queen, he’d had more than enough.

The pain and sense of wrongness almost doubled, threatening to overwhelm Sasuke completely. There were already black spots swimming in his vision, and breathing was becoming harder with each passing moment.

He felt more than heard the puff of smoke that accompanied one of his snakes appearing in this plane of existence.

_“Stop fighting you fool!”_

It was Kanaye, yelling at him out loud instead of with his telepathic voice.

“It’s Mirai! She sealed somebody! Stop fighting before you tear yourself apart!” Kanaye sounded furious and scared. Sasuke didn’t think he’d ever heard that snake afraid of anything before.

Sasuke had to trust Kanaye though. As hard as it was, if there was one thing he could trust, it was his snakes; they were literally a part of him.

It was terrifying, letting go. Letting that alien force inside him. It swelled, pushing at his thoughts, at his sense of self. Just before he thought he couldn’t stand a single moment more, the pain receded into a dark corner of his mind. He was still aware of it, could sense it.

Him.

It did feel a lot like he could feel Itachi inside him, but where his brother’s presence was a bright beacon of warmth, this felt dark and angry. Without the horrible pain and fear, he could sense how that presence thrashed in its bonds, uselessly fighting. As inexperienced as he was, Sasuke could already tell the struggling was useless, that the bonds were too strong to ever be broken no matter how strong the presence felt.

When he came back to himself, Sasuke became aware of the fact that he was kneeling in the middle of the street, both hands dug deep into the sandy ground, a small pool of red under him where fat drops of blood from his nose had noisily splattered. Kanaye, who was busily climbing one of his arms, was already glowing with his healing chakra and cursing a steady litany of abuse at Sasuke.

With a wince he shook his hands free of the sand, his fingers aching terribly. Kanaye was radiating a welcoming relief to his pounding head. As Sasuke used the back of his hand to wipe the blood from his upper lip, he looked around to asses how much of a show he’d made of himself.

Quite a bit, judging from the small crowd of onlookers. He would have to stop coming here for supplies, his presence no longer a secret. People would remember him this time, and the information would trickle down to Suna’s ANBU sooner or later.

The onlookers were kept at a distance though. It took him an embarrassingly long moment to realise that Suigetsu and Karin had set a perimeter around him. Suigetsu had his sword bared and was standing to the left of Sasuke, very obviously radiating the intent to kill should somebody come too close.

On his right, Karin was standing with two kunai ready, also radiating killing intent.

This made Sasuke feel something he’d rather not name. He’d never told Suigetsu or Karin what they could or could not do. He’d let them go when they decided to break off from his team and when they came back asking to be taken in, he let them. He was bound by his duty to avenge his clan and to rebuilding it. Sasuke had spent so long sacrificing parts of himself in his quest for revenge, there was nothing else left any more. They…still had a choice, had possibilities.

To see them ready to fight, to protect when he never asked them to, twisted something inside him.

“Sasuke?” It was Karin, tense and serious, all the overblown fawning gone in the face of the professionality he knew she was capable of.

“I’m fine,” he said, gentler than he’d ever responded to her before, still unsure what to feel or think about what had happened. “We need to go back to the camp. Now.”

Neither of them questioned him when he got up, stumbling a little when his sight went fuzzy, and then shunshin’ed to the outside of the village.

“As long as you are not dying on us, sure.” Sasuke heard Suigetsu mutter behind him.

* * *

“I didn’t expect this from you, Itachi-san.”

Itachi knelt down beside Kisame.

“You always forget,” Itachi said, almost gently. “That I love the ninja arts. I like sparring with a strong opponent that challenges me to be better, think faster.” Itachi folded his hands in his lap, oddly prim and looking like was settling in to wait for however long was necessary. For what, Kisame had no idea. “But I hate fighting.”

“Why not kill me then?”

“I love my brother,” Itachi said simply. “And he will need strong fighters if his plan is to succeed.”

Kisame sighed.

“I always thought that being alone, caring for nothing and no one would make me stronger. The strongest. That was why I killed my team, when my village ordered it.”

Kisame laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“I guess you proved me otherwise, huh?”

Itachi sighed.

“I don’t know where people got the idea that love was this pure, wholly good and gentle emotion. I have seen more atrocities committed in the name of love than in the name of any of the darker emotions.”

Kisame laughed again wryly.

“Do you like what you have become, Itachi-san?”

The Uchiha tilted his head in puzzlement, the bandages over his eyes only adding to the deceptively vulnerable look.

“What makes you think I was ever any different?”

 

* * *

 

Sasuke found his brother in their tent, sitting cross legged on the unmade bedding, sharpening knives. It was littered with clothes, sharpening supplies, blankets, pillows and snakes.

A lot of snakes actually.

Using his foot, Sasuke pushed the bedding and protesting snakes aside. They adored his brother and tended to follow him everywhere, no matter if Sasuke gave such an order or not. It made for crowded sleeping, that was for sure. Itachi didn’t outwardly react to him, merely kept sharpening his kunai in slow, meditative movements.

Sasuke fingered the small bottle he had stashed in one of his pockets, considering how vulnerable Itachi’s hands looked without the nail polish, how naked. He sat down in front of his brother.

“Give me your hand.”

Itachi’s long tail of hair snaked over his shoulder as he tilted his head, obviously considering, but he reached his left hand towards Sasuke anyway.

Sasuke could never understand how someone with such delicate, somewhat bony hands could be this dangerous a fighter. Itachi, even so sick he could barely breathe, was one of the most feared ninja in all the nations.

Sasuke ran his fingers over the deceptively fragile bones of his brother’s fingers and up to the prominent bones of his wrist, wondering at the strength needed to do what Itachi had done in the name of keeping peace, of stopping another war. How it must have felt to spend years as a member of a criminal organization, just so he could spy on them, all the while knowing that he could only end this sorry existence by dying from his younger brother’s hand.

Letting the hand rest on his knee, Sasuke opened the bottle of dark nail polish. Now that he actually looked, Sasuke noticed that his brother was somewhat vain about his looks. He wore jewelry such as the necklace that was described in the Bingo Book as a distinguishing mark.

“Why did you tell Mirai to seal Kisame?” Sasuke asked, while making sure he was applying even coats of polish to his brother’s ruthlessly short fingernails.

“It wouldn’t have taken him long to realize how weak I was.” Itachi said gently.

Sasuke switched to another finger.

“You could have asked the snakes to fight. You know I leave them here on purpose.”

Another finger went well but he messed up the index finger rather badly.

The silence between them stretched as Sasuke focused on finishing painting his brother’s nails and _not_ grabbing his shoulders and yelling until he was blue in the face. It had hurt, being forced to accept another, unwanted, presence in his mind. It had hurt more to know that it was Itachi who forced it on him.

Sasuke wondered why Itachi had wanted to save Kisame’s life.

“Kisame would be the easiest to control and at the same time the most desirable fighter. He has natural advantages over any ninjutsu users, especially chakra monsters like the Kyuubi container. You will need him.”

Sasuke let his brother’s left hand go and reached for the right.

“What color?” Itachi asked suddenly, his hand easy and malleable in Sasuke’s hold.

“Dark blue. The same shade as the stones in your necklace.”

Itachi hummed his agreement.

“Why would I need Kisame? I have you, Juugo, Suigetsu and Karin. Besides, there are very few ninja I couldn’t take on anyway.”

Itachi sighed.

“I am no better than a civilian right now. A two minute fight with only taijutsu nearly wiped me out. Karin is no match for heavy hitters like Kakashi or Tsunade. Juugo is a juggernaut; you can’t control him once he lets go of his chakra. You are left only with Suigetsu, and that is not enough if you want to protect a camp full of people. You basically have the same problem any ninja village has. To have enough powerful ninja to be able to send them out for missions to earn money, and have enough at home to protect it.”

Sasuke brought both of Itachi’s hands closer to his mouth and blew gently to dry the polish faster.

“You want me to come back to Konoha,” Sasuke murmured between breaths.

Itachi exhaled softly.

“At least two of the women are pregnant already. More will be soon if you keep up with your plan. They will need proper medical attention, proper shelter and good food. Living in a camp high in the mountains, in tents, will not be feasible soon. You will have to make a decision before winter sets in.”

Sasuke closed his eyes, being very careful not to crush Itachi’s hands.

“The thing about hate,” he murmured softly, still bent over the deceptively fragile fingers, “is that once you’ve _felt_ it, you can never _unfeel_ it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sasuke untangled the red thread binding Itachi’s hair and smoothed down the freed hair. it was cool and smooth under his hands. Separating a strand, Sasuke started to brush it with the small hairbrush he carried in his personal kit.

He loved doing it, running the hairbrush over the silky dark hair until it gleamed. There was a funny little kink in the silky mass, where the tie usually pulled it into a tail. Sasuke had started doing this, just sitting with Itachi and brushing his hair, ever since Itachi was strong enough to sit up by himself.

He remembered his brother having long hair as a child, but not this long. Loose, it reached as far as the blanket they sat on. It was another of those little things that had changed about Itachi. The hair, usually worn in a tail, was luxurious and had obviously been taken care of. A brash challenge for his opponents to try and get closer to him. He wore the characteristic necklace, rings, and in his pack, Sasuke even found some bracelets. None of the jewelry was expensive and most of it was old, so he guessed it must have meant something to his brother.

Finally, the brush was sliding easily through the fine, silky hair; so different than Sasuke’s own bristly mane.

Sasuke dropped the comb and ran his fingers through the silken mass one last time before letting his hands rest on Itachi’s shoulders. He hesitated for a moment before sliding his right hand down and under the loose shirt Itachi wore to rest it against the warm, smooth skin of his chest. He could feel the steady breaths and the faint rattle that accompanied every exhale. Kanaye's healing was keeping Itachi in a better shape than before, and the sealed eyes were definitely reducing the strain on his body, but he wasn’t healthy. Any kind of physical exertion or chakra strain, and Itachi would relapse. He needed the surgery, and needed it as fast as possible.

“I managed to get access to a hospital in Suna. The operation would be dangerous, but if it went well, you wouldn’t be sick any more.”

Itachi twisted under Sasuke’s hands suddenly, his body flowing like water until Sasuke was on his back, Itachi sitting on his hips, palms of both hands resting on Sasuke’s collarbones.

“The last mission,” said his brother in that careful way of his. “You came back smelling like sex.”

The frank statement froze Sasuke. For some reason he didn’t want Itachi to know about his deal with Gaara. It seemed that cat was well out of the bag though.

“You walked differently. And I could smell it on you.”

Sasuke blinked, he’d made sure to take a shower. No way could Itachi smell sex on him. He opened his mouth to protest, suddenly hoping he could see his brother’s eyes, but meeting only the hated bandage.

“Do you know,” Itachi murmured leaning down. His long ponytail slipped over his shoulder and slapped Sasuke in the face. “That when you let a ninja spill himself inside you, it leaves a miniscule chakra trace?”

Sasuke hadn’t known actually. No one _told_ him that before.

He could feel himself blush, now grateful Itachi couldn’t see him.

“Who was it?” Itachi pressed.

Sasuke stayed silent, hoping his brother would let it go.

“Hmm,” Itachi hummed thoughtfully. “You came back with money and supplies, so you must have taken a mission. There were more supplies than usual, so the prices must have been much better than the usual black market fees. You bought everything legally and that means you had backing. And the hospital. All ninja village hospitals are tightly controlled, there’s no way you could have bribed your way in.”

Itachi sat back suddenly, resting a bit too much weight on Sasuke’s stomach but letting his shoulders go.

Sasuke shivered as the cool weight of Itachi’s hair slithered over his skin before Itachi straightened up.

“Gaara,” he declared finally. “There was sand on your clothes and you smelled of the oil they use there.”

Damn it. Sasuke felt five years old again, when no matter what he did to hide it, his older brother always knew the truth.

“Did he treat you right?”

Sasuke barked out a shocked laugh. This whole conversation was getting more surreal with every minute.

Gaara was not his boyfriend, he didn’t have any good intentions towards Sasuke; it was just a deal.

And yet.

Gaara and Itachi had a history. Itachi had help kidnap him, had help extract Shukaku from him. That extraction ended with Gaara’s death and then Chio’s subsequent sacrifice to save the young redhead. It made sense that Itachi worried that Gaara had used Sasuke’s situation to get some kind of revenge.

“The guy’s ridiculously honorable. The deal was for sex, and sex we had. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

Itachi tilted his head to the side, his ponytail sliding over his shoulder with a quiet rustle.

“Sex can be used to hurt just as much as violence.”

Sasuke closed his eyes, fed up with this conversation but unable to push Itachi away.

“He was careful. And gentle.” Something hot and heavy twisted in Sasuke’s stomach when he remembered that night. “I _hated_ it,” he admitted finally, letting the words escape him on a rush.

Itachi sat quietly, considering him, giving no outward clue as to his thoughts.

“What did you hate? The act itself or the way he treated you?”

Sasuke could feel his throat getting dry. He could always push Itachi away, refuse to answer, but if he couldn’t admit it even to his brother. Who else was he going to tell? It wasn’t like he had an abundance of people he trusted enough to talk to.

“I… I liked the act,” he admitted finally. “It wasn’t the first time a man fucked me, anyway.”

His brother tensed above him. Sasuke could feel it the sudden tension in the body sitting on him, reminding him that even sick and chakra depleted, Itachi was still incredibly dangerous.

“Orochimaru?” Itachi asked neutrally, coming to the obvious conclusion.

Sasuke shook his head before he remembered Itachi couldn’t see him.

“No, despite how it looked, Orochimaru had no interest in me sexually,” he said. After a pause he continued. “Kakashi, actually.”

His brother was quiet for a while.

“Hatake Kakashi?”

The _your teacher_ went unsaid, but Sasuke heard it loud and clear anyway.

“Yes.”

“And how old were you when that happened?” Itachi asked with a very measured, very calm tone. Sasuke had the impression that if his former teacher had been here, Itachi would be in the process of murdering him this very minute.

“A few months before our battle,” Sasuke admitted. “I needed him to…” he swallowed dryly, his throat clicking oddly, “for a ritual.”

Sasuke tried not to think about the signing of his contract with Mother Queen too much. He didn't like remembering how the ancient being entered into his mind and rearranged it effortlessly for her convenience. Tried not to remember how she had had him come to her, how she looked; the earthy color of her smooth skin stretched over an unnaturally hard body. She’d made an effort to look human, but it was very obvious she’d had no idea how humans looked or behaved. For months afterwards, Sasuke had flinched at any woman that came too close.

Itachi made a thoughtful sound, still sitting on him. “How did you get in contact with Kakashi? You were with Orochimaru then.”

Knowing what he knew now, it didn’t surprise Sasuke that Itachi kept careful track of him.

“He was caught spying. I managed to intercept the information before it was sent to Orochimaru. For the ritual, I needed to be the receptive party in sexual intercourse. I couldn’t stand the thought of it being anyone from Sound, so I chose him.”

“And Kakashi?”

Sasuke exhaled long and slow.

“He was _kind_.”

“You are allowed, you know,” Itachi said gently, shifting his weight until he was lying down beside Sasuke, one arm stretched over Sasuke’s chest, “to feel good.”

* * *

The stream Itachi used to sneak in some training while nobody was watching was occupied. It seemed that half the women in the camp were doing a massive amount of laundry. There were sounds of vigorous washing, the susurration of cloth being rubbed over the washing grate, and the sounds of the younger children playing close by. There was also a sound of an infant crying and his frazzled mother trying to calm him down. From the voice, Itachi recognized it was Mito, the woman who’d given birth to her child already after being freed from Orochimaru’s lab.

“Itachi-san.” She greeted him distractedly. For some unknown reason, all the women in the camp seemed to _like_ him, and it wasn’t that they didn’t know who he was and what he was capable of, it just didn’t seem to matter to them at all.

Itachi listened to her rapid breathing, indicating stress and the calls from the other women. They evidently had a lot of work to do and the fussing baby wasn’t helping. He thought back to the time when Sasuke had been just a baby and their mother would often give the small bundle to Itachi to take care of.

“Would you like me to help with him?” He indicated the fussing child, not really expecting her to trust him with the baby.

Mito exhaled as if somebody had taken a great weight off of her shoulders.

“Oh yes. Thank you!” She surprised him with the enthusiastic agreement. “I changed and fed him; truly I have no idea why he keeps crying.”

Itachi thought it probably had to do with the low-level stress she was radiating, obviously tired and busy. Many ninja were good with infants, mostly because they knew how to project only certain emotions while concealing others.

A warm, tiny, crying weight was pushed into his arms and it felt achingly familiar. It had been more than fifteen years since he’d held a baby, but it came back to him immediately.

Itachi sat down in a spot of sun, feeling its warmth on his face and arranged the crying bundle more comfortably in the crook of his arm. After making sure the baby was secure, if still crying, he decided to cheat a bit.

“Fuu,” he called quietly, sending a small burst of chakra into the ground around him to get the attention of one of the three snakes which usually hung around the kids. The rattler siblings were the youngest of Sasuke’s snakes, and were unusually energetic for snakes. Upon seeing them in this plane of existence for the first time, Sasuke immediately assigned them to guarding the kids. Since then it wasn’t a rare thing to hear the kids in the camp come thundering past, accompanied by hissing, spitting, or rattling.

_You bellowed?_

The voice had a suggestion of laughter around the edges. They were all so very different, Sasuke’s snakes. Yuuta was so reserved as to be cold, the most alien of the bunch. Mirai was just too sweet and innocent. Kanaye was irritated 24/7 and cursed like a sailor, Hajime, a calm and competent companion. Nao and Nobu, the two younger healers were like yin and yang. Where Nobu was generally lazy and agreeable, Nao was hyperfocused and aggressive, willing to bite at anyone and anything. And he wasn’t shy about using venom. Fuu, Yuu, and Sia were like the triplets from hell. They had a _sense of humor_. Itachi wasn’t sure Sasuke would survive his own snakes at this rate, considering how sour Sasuke was most of the time.

“I need to borrow your tail,” Itachi answered stretching his free hand in an invitation for the snake to come closer.

_Eh?_

But it was too late for Fuu to escape. He came close enough for Itachi to touch him. Quickly he trailed his fingers along the slender body until he was gripping what was definitely the tail.

_Ack!_

The snake protested as Itachi used Fuu’s tail as a child's rattle and shook it in the baby’s face, the rattling sound distracting it from crying.

Fuu squirmed unhappily for a moment before realizing that Itachi was not going to let go, and eventually resigned himself to hanging upside down while the baby did its best to slobber all over the rattle.

“Hmm, he must be teething,” Itachi mused, shifting the now quiet child.

 _This_ complained the deadly rattler hanging upside down, _is so not what I was born to do._

* * *

 _You squeeze me any tighter and I swear I will throw up the last rat I ate_ , Hajime complained mildly.

Sasuke let go of the white snake, only now noticing how his hands hurt. Hajime slithered to the hospital floor and away from him.

It was unbearably hard, watching Itachi be prepared for surgery. The surgery team was buzzing around the operating theater. Itachi lay very still in the centre of the activity, his bare chest very thin and oddly vulnerable in the harsh lighting. His eyes were still covered by bandages; reducing chakra strain during and immediately after the surgery was extremely important. So important, Kanaye had temporarily sealed most of Itachi’s chakra pathways, leaving him almost as vulnerable as a civilian. Sasuke couldn’t even imagine how it must feel, being this defenseless in front of so many people. 

On one of the little rolling tables usually used for instruments, three snakes lay curled up. All were water snakes, the biggest one was Kanaye, his dark eyes watching the procedure carefully. Beside him were Nao and Noboru. Both water species, deadly poisonous and both were healers. They were younger and had less stamina than Kanaye, so they tended to cooperate with Kanaye for the bigger things. Had a tendency to sneak into Sasuke’s bed at night and play pranks. 

Mirai was curled behind Itachi’s head. She was still not much bigger than Sasuke’s palm, and very attached to Itachi. 

Sasuke cast a glance towards Kisame stationed by the door. Mirai’s love for Itachi was especially visible in the seal she gave him. Kisame was so tightly controlled he couldn’t even _think_ against Sasuke, his mind blanking out immediately. The first few days he kept blacking out before he adjusted enough not to trigger the seal every few minutes. Itachi, on the other hand, brushed the limits of the seal only once and even that, barely.

 _He’s going to be okay,_ Hajime said suddenly. _He is not the kind to cause trouble and Mirai is so tense I swear she is all ready to call Mother Queen if anything goes badly._

Sasuke looked at the white cobra that had grown significantly the last few months. He was as long as Sasuke was tall by now, and when he rose up, spreading his hood he looked quite intimidating. 

“Don’t even joke about it.” Sasuke muttered, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants.

Suigetsu and Juugo stayed in the camp, with all fighting-oriented snakes Sasuke could summon at once, to protect it. 

Karin and Juugo were supposed to stay in the hospital to watch over Itachi during the surgery. Sasuke had to make sure that the most powerful fighter in Suna was otherwise occupied and wouldn’t think to check on the hospital staff.

Sasuke made sure to put everyone who knew the identity of the patient under an elaborate genjutsu. It worked in two stages. First convincing the doctors that they were doing this on ANBU’s orders. Sasuke couldn’t risk messing up their perceptions before the surgery, so the genjutsu would reactivate once the surgery was complete. It should wipe their memories and give Sasuke a head start. Nobody could know that Itachi was alive yet. Kisame also had to stay a secret. Until his brother was healthy, Sasuke had to keep it all a secret. He wasn’t overly interested in politics, but even he knew that no village would ignore him any longer if they knew how many S-class fighters he had with him. 

As the doctors injected the sedative into Itachi, Sasuke turned away, heading for the door. As he stepped through the threshold, Kisame stirred from his easy slouch and turned to Sasuke.

“You know I saw a lot of powerful, terrifying ninja in my travels. I must say that you Uchiha really put the ‘monster’ in monstrous.”

Sasuke didn’t respond, just looked at Kisame with his Mangekyou spinning lazily.

Maybe Kisame was right. Maybe their bloodline was too dangerous. Maybe this power was what drove them down the most dangerous of paths over and over again. 

It was just starting to get dark when he slipped out of the window and jumped to the nearest roof heading for the hokage tower, his mind unquiet and body tense with too many pent up emotions.

Breaking in was easy with the path left empty for him. He wondered if Gaara was so sure he would come back, was he expecting him? The Sand Kazekage never specified if their deal was a one time thing or not. It left way too much control in Sasuke’s hands. He wasn’t expecting it. When he heard Gaara’s proposition for the first time, he thought he understood what was expected of him.

Gaara spent most of his life feared by everyone in Suna and even further afield. He was nothing but a child psychopath, Shukaku’s presence inside him poisoning his young mind with it’s endless hate of everything human. The way his father had strived to make him into an undefeatable weapon didn’t help any. Even after the extraction, people of Suna still saw Gaara as a monster, the memories of what he could do with his sand too fresh in everybody’s mind. It stood to reason that he had problems finding a bed partner that wouldn’t endanger his already precarious position. Sasuke had been a great choice. He looked good and meant nothing to anybody here. If something bad happened to Sasuke, it wasn’t as if there was anybody here to care about it.

The redhead wasn’t supposed to have been gentle though. Wasn’t supposed to have left so much power in Sasuke's hands. Wasn’t supposed to have been _innocent_ at all.

It discomfited Sasuke. Took him aback and left him floundering, how different reality had been from his expectation, how wrongly he had judged the man.

Sasuke hadn’t liked the reminder of how wrong he could sometimes be. Hadn’t liked it at all. He also hadn’t liked the feeling of hesitance, almost shyness that had gripped him when he had slid into the Kage’s bedroom and met the surprised, pale green eyes.

He hated this feeling so much, that when Gaara had kissed him with the same gentleness he displayed that first night, Sasuke had bit at his lips.

Itachi said he was allowed to feel good, but not today. Not when his brother’s life was hanging in the balance, not from Gaara’s hands. 

Sasuke wished he could cry. That he could scream or wail, do anything to express that huge, howling thing living inside him. But he couldn’t. So he had clawed and snarled at Gaara, hoping that the man would hurt him, so at least his body would show what he was feeling inside.

* * *

 _Will you quit this hovering?_ Kanaye snarled, faking an attack. Sasuke was almost sure the water snake wouldn’t use venom, if only because he would then need to heal Sasuke.

“It’s been four days!” Sasuke made a sharp turn in the small tent and started to pace back, all of three steps before he had to turn again or run face first into the canvas.

_And I told you the surgery went textbook perfect. I put him in an induced coma because he is as stubborn as you, and would have started overexerting himself the moment he woke up!_

Yes, Kanaye was rapidly approaching the limit of his tolerance. 

“We transferred my chakra to him again,” Sasuke murmured. “The last time we did it…didn’t go well.” Even remembering that day caused his heartbeat to rapidly increase. Itachi kept screaming and flatlining. His heart stopping so many times…

Kanaye slithered onto Itachi’s chest, his forked tongue tasting the air he breathed out, the snake’s dark green, triangular head a shocking contrast to Itachi’s pale skin.

 _I hadn’t known then. The only human I had ever healed was you, I had no idea you were different, that Mother Queen changed you,_ Kanaye admitted softly. _Itachi has managed to achieve what most humans are incapable of. His yin and yang chakra is in perfect balance. That is why he was so powerful with just the measly amount his sick body was capable of storing. Your chakra is almost purely yin. When we introduced it into his system it damaged the balance, causing his eyes to evolve rapidly. Too rapidly, pulling way too much chakra from an already depleted body. It caused a shock to his system. Now that I know what to look for, I can filter your chakra into something less corrosive for him._

“How much longer will he be unconscious?” 

_Nobu?_ Kanaye called a question. From beneath the blankets a much smaller snake emerged, looking slightly limp and vague around the edges. 

_Yah_ , muttered Nobu around a wide yawn, _no need to yell_.

 _How long will it take you to clear his chakra channels?_ Kanaye questioned.

 _Four days I think. Besides Nao is still working on the surgery site and you know how nasty he gets when somebody interferes in his work,_ reported the smaller snake turning to slither back under the blankets. _It’s cold here,_ he complained, his head already under the blanket.

Sasuke grabbed his tail and pulled him away from the blankets, fixated on something he said.

“Why? I thought Kanaye had already healed the incision? Was there something wrong?”

Nobu snorted, the sound shivering oddly in Sasuke’s mind.

_Yeah it was. Kanaye left a scar! I mean, come on, have you seen that chest? It’s like a crime against nature! Nao was really, really irked about it. Besides I am not going to tell him no. Nao might be small but he is poisonous as hell and he bites._

Sasuke let Nobu go, watching as the water snake slithered quickly under Itachi’s blankets.

 _Four days then,_ admitted Kanaye, also not willing to brave Nao’s anger. That kid had a bite on him like nobody’s business. _Let the fanboy finish his spa treatment. A few more days of rest won’t hurt. Besides you will want to release his eyes the same day he wakes up I assume?_

Sasuke stared at Kanaye, taken aback.

He’d forgotten.

He’d forgotten that when he took the bandages down, he would be able to look into eyes like his again.

“Yeah,” he muttered quietly. “He’s waited long enough.”

Sasuke left the tent, too keyed up to rest, unwilling to just sit and stare at his unconscious brother.

“Wanna spar?”

The question caught him by surprise. When he turned to look at the speaker, he caught the white shine of Suigetsu’s teeth before his sword nearly cleaved him in half.

Rolling away from the range of Suigetsu’s weapon and activating the sharingan, Sasuke thought that yes, he rather wanted to _spar_.

Between Suigetsu coming at him with his weapons, Juugo offering to fight him when the water user had had enough, and Karin of all people, forcing him to chase her all over the mountain for his weapon scrolls she’d stolen, Sasuke had no time for anything but fighting, and then collapsing from exhaustion where he stood, only to start all over again the next morning.

It would strike him later that he had no idea when exactly the ragtag group he’d inherited after Orochimaru had become such a good team, and when exactly had they decide they needed to _manage_ Sasuke?


	6. Chapter 6

His hands shook as he raised them to Itachi’s face and took hold of the bandages which had secured his eyes for the past eight months. A short burst of chakra against the seals painted on the cloth and they released. He could hear Itachi’s sharp intake of air, probably already feeling the difference.

The cloth fell away easily, leaving light pink creases in places where it had been tied too tightly.

Sasuke rubbed them gently with his fingertips, watching as Itachi’s long eyelashes fluttered gently over his pale cheeks.

“Kanaye said you should only activate the first stage today,” Sasuke murmured softly.

When he lowered his hands, Itachi opened his eyes for the first time in months. They were big and dark but a completely different color than Sasuke remembered. Instead of the cold black, like Sasuke himself, it was a very dark grey, a much softer color.

Itachi blinked a few times, obviously bothered by the sparse light the early morning provided.

Soon though his eyes sharpened and obviously focused on Sasuke. First on his eyes and then he gave him a slow, thoughtful sweep. Then he reached both hands to Sasuke’s face and pushed his hair off his face, staring at Sasuke for long moments.

“My little brother is _so pretty_ ,” he sighed finally and Sasuke could feel himself _blush_. The heat started high on his cheeks but soon spread all over his face and neck, only intensifying the more Sasuke was aware of it.

He leaned back from the touch, letting his fringe fall over his face.

Itachi didn’t seem bothered, now busy with watching the trees around him, the grey sky above, tracking different movements around them.

“After the surgery, Nobu realised your eyesight was exceedingly bad,” Sasuke explained quietly, watching Itachi. “Once Kanaye was finished with regrowing your lungs, Nobu restored your eyesight to what it should be.”

Itachi stopped his perusal of the surrounding nature to cast a glance to Sasuke.

“I am going to spoil your snakes _rotten_ , just so you know,” Itachi said, deadly serious before turning his eyes to look at a nearest tree, its leaves being shaken from it by the sudden breeze.

Sasuke grimaced.

“You already do,” the younger Uchiha muttered, thinking about all the ‘ _but Itachi says…’_ he heard for the last few months.

“You do realise how rare this kind of healing power is? How valuable?” Itachi asked, not looking at Sasuke.

“This was the trade-off,” Sasuke said. “None of them could ever come close to the sheer destructive power Manda’s or Gamabunta’s. Hajime will never be bigger than an average human. In an outright fight, they would never be more dangerous than they are already.”

This time Itachi looked at him.

“Sasuke.” He asked suddenly. “Why did you sign the contract?”

Not looking at his brother, Sasuke touched the ground, pulling at that place in his mind that corresponded to Hajime.

The white cobra appeared in a puff of smoke, his hood already open and hissing a challenge, red eyes faintly glowing with chakra, obviously ready for a fight. It took him a moment to realise that he wasn’t being called into battle. With an audible sigh, Hajime relaxed his hood and flopped down on the ground in a rather undignified manner.

 _False alarm, huh_ , Hajime muttered miffed.

“Not exactly,” Sasuke answered. “I want to show Itachi what we can do.”

Hajime turned his head towards Sasuke, his red eyes regarding him with that alien intelligence most of Sasuke’s snakes possessed.

 _You sure_? Hajime asked, directing the thought only at Sasuke.

The younger Uchiha licked his lips, suddenly dry.

“Yes.”

He could sense Itachi’s attention on him when he folded his hands into the first seal. Sasuke’s eyes shifted into Sharingan and then quickly into Mangekyou Sharingan. Exhaling slowly he let them shift _again_ , the left starburst spinning faster and separating suddenly into seven tomoe. Around the pupil there were now concentric lines. On first line there was two tomoe, on the second three and on the last one, the one farthest away from the pupil two more.

Sharingan Rinnegan.

Forcing chakra into his left eye, he breathed one word: _Orochimaru_.

Hajime’s shape started to twist and fade, his edges blurring. His shape became larger, taller, standing upright and towering over both brothers. When the shape solidified, they were looking at a living, breathing Orochimaru.

“Sasuke-kun,” the man hissed with a smirk tugging at his lips. “You truly are my student.”

Itachi kept very still, his eyes already activated to Sharingan and studying Orochimaru.

“He’s alive,” the older Uchiha stated. “He’s not a ghost, an illusion or a reanimation. He’s actually alive. I can see his chakra flowing.”

Sasuke nodded, not looking at his brother or his former teacher.

“Hajime’s given him his body for now. He will stay here as long as I want. The jutsu is passive so it doesn’t matter if I am alive or aware. He will be here, alive and as powerful as he was before, for as long as Hajime takes his place in the Underworld.

Itachi frowned.

“If his body is physically that of your summon, it means his lifespan could be counted in hundreds of years.”

“Theoretically,” Sasuke agreed again.

Itachi turned his eyes to Orochimaru again, the Sannin looking curiously around himself, ostensively ignoring the brothers.

“You are sealed,” Itachi stated, noting the lack of aggression or unhealthy fascination coming from the Sannin.

Orochimaru raised his head from examining a bush and turned his gold eyes on the older brother.

“Just like you, Itachi-san.” There was a flash of malicious smirk on the snake Sannin’s face before it morphed into a smile. “By the way Sasuke-kun, you have my respect for this. Even I have never put a control seal on somebody I loved. It seems you are truly determined to surpass all my expectations of you.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

“It’s not like you ever loved anyone anyway,” the younger Uchiha shot back, oddly unsettled by Orochimaru’s needling.

The Sannin hummed, turning back to the bush he was examining, his long dark hair falling over his shoulders and hiding his face from view.

“Didn’t I?” He touched his fingers to the craggy bush. “I just never let that love stop me from doing what I needed.” He straightened out suddenly. “If you extract oil from this plant you will get an incredibly powerful paralytic. Very useful for coating weapons.”

With a slow exhale, Sasuke made the seal for release, leaving only Hajime where moment’s before Orochimaru stood, leaving the brothers alone.

* * *

Itachi looked at his brother, who was still crouching on the ground with his head lowered, letting his fringe cover his eyes. Itachi watched and considered the implications of what he saw. The way Orochimaru behaved, the obvious ease and familiarity Sasuke had with summoning.

“Sasuke,” he called softly, waiting for his brother to look him in the eye.

Sasuke hesitated for a long while before finally raising his head. With his own sharingan active, Itachi immediately noticed the difference in Sasuke’s eyes. One of the floating tomoe in his left eye looked faded, barely visible. Itachi wondered what the cost to such a summoning was. Sasuke didn’t show outward pain, but he wouldn’t show it anyway, a lifetime of hiding his pain made it impossible for him to express it any more.

“Who can you summon? Are there special requirements?”

Sasuke’s eyes went black and blank, staring up at Itachi almost helplessly.

“Anyone killed by an Uchiha. Anyone who died in the presence of Uchiha blood.” His voice was soft and oddly flat. Itachi could feel his heart speeding up and palms getting damp. If he followed that logic…

“You can summon any Uchiha,” Itachi continued, already sure of his words.

His brother looked at him helplessly, like the wounded child he really was and nodded.

Itachi closed his own eyes, deactivating the Sharingan, not wanting the cursed eyes recording Sasuke’s face as it was in this moment for all eternity, in high definition detail. Maybe he was a coward but he didn’t want to be reminded of how much he’d damaged his brother forever etched into his mind. He’d been just fourteen when the order to kill the Uchiha clan had been passed to him. He’d wanted to make sure his brother would be strong. Would be driven to to be better, stronger, _independent_ of clan or politics.

Instead he’d made him so hard, Sasuke had turned brittle and more fragile than anyone with this kind of power was supposed to be.

“What did you do, little brother?”

Sasuke took a shuddering breath.

“I could feel it. The possibility. The…potential. It was right after I killed Orochimaru. I was…probably not in my right mind then.” Sasuke’s voice was hollow. “I thought that it couldn’t hurt, you know. Just talking to her one more time?”

Itachi sad down, _hard_ , not even feeling his knees hit the ground.

Their _mother_.

Sasuke was talking about their mother.

About bringing her to life, however temporarily.

“I was feeling very bad. And I hated you. I wanted to kill you so badly.” Sasuke’s voice turned to a gravelly whisper. “But I missed you too. Missed them. So much…”

“Sasuke,” Itachi said helplessly, very sure he didn’t want to hear the rest of the story.

“It was easy,” Sasuke continued almost angrily. “Their souls were so close, it took barely any effort to call her.”

Itachi wondered if Sasuke realized he was crying.

“Her voice was exactly like I remembered it.” Sasuke’s voice hitched. “She smelled like home,” he admitted childishly. “She touched my face and told me everything was going to be okay. That she forgave me. That she loved me.” The boy choked on the last word, as if it was a ball of razor wire. “I just couldn’t understand why she didn’t have her eyes. Just two black holes where they used to be. So I asked, why you took them too. Wasn't killing the family enough? Did you have to disfigure them too?”

Itachi flinched, before he caught the meaning of Sasuke’s words.

 _Eyes_?

“I didn’t take our parents’ eyes, Sasuke.” Itachi said slowly, feeling raw and baffled.

“I know,” Sasuke said, eerily calm. “I asked and they told me. Everything.” he swallowed, his throat clicking horribly. “About the coup, about your decision to stay loyal to the village and stop the war from breaking out again. They told me you weren’t the only one killing that night. They told me about the Elder Shimura Danzou manipulating the clan into the coup and then, after…about Danzou harvesting all the awakened Sharingan from the bodies of our family.”

Itachi stared, his own breathing rattling in his chest just like when he was still sick.

“What?” he _stuttered_.

Sasuke looked at him helplessly.

“That’s why I can’t stop yet, Itachi.” His brother looked pleadingly at him, wide eyes glassy with the trauma of remembering. “I can’t rest while Shimura Danzo walks the Earth with our dead family’s eyes _implanted_ into his arm!”

There was acid in his mouth. In his lungs and in his belly, burning his throat.

Danzo _implanted_ his family’s eyes into his body.

Danzo _manipulated_ the Clan into being unhappy with their position enough to consider a coup.

Danzo was one of the three Elders of the Elder’s Council.

Danzo _gave the order_ to kill the Uchiha clan.

Danzo _manipulated_ everyone so that he could steal the Sharingan eyes.

Danzo _manipulated_ Itachi.

Itachi tilted sideways and on shaking hands crawled a little to the side before he lost the battle with his stomach and started retching up what felt like every meal he ever ate.

There was wetness on his face and mucus running from his nose, his throat burned with the acid he forced out of his stomach with every violent spasm. Peripherally he was aware of a presence beside him, cool strong hands pulling his hair away from his face and keeping the longer strands clear of the mess he was making.

With each retch the spasms were getting worse, so hard it was impossible to draw breath between each violent retch. Itachi’s sight was getting blurry and darker with each passing second.

When the darkness came, he welcomed it gratefully.

 

* * *

 

“You think this will change anything? Putting a control seal on your brother. Making children. You won’t change the way people behave. The way ninja act and all their ruthlessness. Ninja will still spill blood and violence all over, until nothing is left.” Kisame’s voice was oddly polite and even. It was something Sasuke noticed from the start. The Kiri ninja never swore, never argued and maintained an aura of equanimity. It matched oddly with the sheer body count Kisame had acquired.

“There are many ways of changing the way people behave. There are the immediate ones. If you are powerful enough you can _force_ people to do what you want, but it only lasts as long as you are actually capable to back up the threats you make.” Sasuke leaned further against the tree, his dark eyes following the women, children and snakes bustling in the small camp. “And eventually you will get old. Weak. Or simply be somewhere else at a crucial moment. Whatever you did, whatever you managed to create with your power alone would crumble to dust the day you die.”

Kisame turned to look at the younger Uchiha.

“Without strength you will simply fall under your enemies might.”

“I know, but I am powerful enough to hold my own.” Sasuke agreed easily. “That’s why I need them. I need to protect them.” Sasuke motioned to the children chasing a green, striped snake all over the camp. Sasuke had to admit it looked pretty hilarious. “If I teach them to uphold my ideas while they are young enough to internalise them, they will continue my vision long after I am dead.”

Kisame was silent for a while, simply watching.

“And what ideals would that be?” The mist nin looked back at Sasuke, assessing.

“Simple things,” Sasuke said, still watching the children. “That ninja are not tools. That while they chose to act as weapons, they are still human and have a right to refuse a mission. That children should be allowed to be children.”

“I guess it’s not a bad idea to live by,” Kisame admitted softly and Sasuke remembered that in Kiri, kids were forced to kill their teammates to graduate from the Academy.

The bigger ninja sat down on the ground beside Sasuke, letting his huge sword lay between them. Sasuke eyed it warily, more than aware that the Samehada, one of the Seven Legendary swords was at least partially sentient.

“So this is what you want to do? Just settle down and raise kids?”

“First I need to kill the current hokage of Konoha.”

Kisame froze and then turned to look at Sasuke, his small eyes wide open.

“You Uchiha brothers…” he murmured. “If nothing else, you are interesting.”

Sasuke let a corner of his lips tug up.

“So, are you in?”

Kisame snorted.

“Do I have a choice?”

Sasuke flickered his eyes towards the tent in which his brother was still sleeping.

“Yes. You are too much of a threat to be left alive. But I will not force you to follow me.”

A civilian might be shocked at the choice Sasuke had given Kisame, but in the reality of being a missing ninja, a quick, painless death was actually a luxury very few experienced.

“I think it might be interesting,” Kisame mused, “to follow you, Uchiha brothers.”

 

* * *

Sasuke found Itachi north of the camp, sitting on a fallen log with most of Sasuke’s snakes arranged around him. Beside him lay a carcass of a rabbit or rather sad remnants of it. As he watched, Itachi tilted his head towards Yuuta and reached to cut off a piece of the rabbit before offering the morsel to the mud-brown snake. Yuuta slithered closer and carefully took the meat before slithering a small distance away to eat it. The snake looked very pleased with itself.

Itachi was obviously talking to the snakes, judging by his and their body language. But since they were communicating telepathically, Sasuke could not overhear anything. His brother looked calm and collected, a faint smile on his lips. Itachi liked the snakes and they adored him. It was good for him, having them close. It seemed his brother had an uncontrollable need to take care of people and the snakes were a perfect outlet it seemed.

“What is going on here?” Sasuke asked softly as he approached.

“We are officially out of mice,” Itachi reported, feeding the last of the rabbit to the uncommonly well-behaved snakes. There was no squabbling, no hissing, and definitely no biting.

Sasuke reached down and picked up Hajime, the white cobra almost spilling through Sasuke’s fingers he was so relaxed.

He gripped harder, soft white coils escaping his grip, and considered the cobra. It wasn’t easy holding him up either.

“I think you are overfeeding them. Hajime is definitely getting pudgy.” He gave another thoughtful squeeze and looked at the other snakes gathered around. “And he’s not the only one.”

His comment earned him a toothless bite and a few offended hisses.

“You have no sense of diplomacy at all,” Itachi commented as he watched the snakes disperse.

“They will survive.”

Itachi snorted.

“Just like you will survive a few bites. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have avoided it.”

“Hn.”

Sasuke watched Itachi clean his kunai with a few nearby leaves before putting it in his thigh holster.

Sasuke wanted to ask how Itachi was feeling, if he was all right, but he just couldn’t find the words. How could he, when Itachi had just learned that most of his life, the suffering he’d carried with him for over a decade was a result of one greedy man’s manipulation.

Itachi’s head was lowered, the shorter hair falling over his eyes and hiding them from view.

“You don’t have to worry about me, little brother.”

Sasuke wished he could just believe Itachi’s words.

“Danzou has to die.” Sasuke swallowed, the rage almost choking him.

“No.” Itachi’s voice was had that resonant, terrifying quality Sasuke remembered from the night of his clan’s massacre. “I won’t let it be that easy for him.” When Itachi raised his face, his eyes were already Mangekyou Sharingan, burning with something far heavier than anger or hatred.

Sasuke moved to his brother, pushing both hands against his eyes, forcing Itachi to close them. Itachi’s fringe tickled the back of his palms. The smell of blood clung to his brother’s clothes, making him feel almost familiar.

“Seventy-two hours of torture would be a nice bonus, but not permanent enough,” Sasuke murmured pressing his face to Itachi’s shoulder, keeping his hands firmly over his brother’s eyes.

Itachi closed his palms over Sasuke’s wrists.

“Oh. The time limit was because of my low chakra levels. Without the sickness eating at my reserves,” Itachi murmured fiercely. “I can make it _so much more_ than that.”

Itachi’s fingernails dug deep enough into the skin of Sasuke’s wrists they drew blood.

“He will _never_ wake up.”

 

* * *

Itachi didn’t sleep that night. 

Neither did Sasuke. His brother tossed and turned until Itachi caught him and pulled close. There were so many things he wanted to say, but none of them could be forced passed his throat. So he stayed silent and kissed Sasuke, hoping that would reach his brother.

Sasuke pushed into the kiss, his lips soft and wet against Itachi’s, opening to deepen it. The smell, the taste of his brother had become so familiar, Itachi followed the clues of Sasuke’s body seamlessly. He opened up under Sasuke’s kiss, letting the younger man explode his mouth, giving in as sweetly as he knew how.

Sasuke touched him more than usual. His hands, always so careful, were sliding under Itachi’s shirt to splay over warm, naked skin. Itachi let himself fall back, sprawling over the blankets and Sasuke followed. Sasuke was slowly gaining not only height, but also building muscle that was making him heavier and more powerful than Itachi physically. There was an odd sense of pleasure in being pressed down by that strong body, a peace in knowledge that Sasuke was strong enough to live his own life, strong enough to survive.

His younger brother was different this time though. His hands were surer, braver, sliding over Itachi’s skin with purpose. His kisses were different too, more impatient, more heated. The slow exploration and odd expression of unspoken feelings turning into a simulacrum of fucking. Sasuke used his heavier body to press between Itachi’s legs, making himself comfortable there, moving his body in slow, subtle rolls that pressed them together from chest to navel.

Itachi moved with him, shifting to accommodate the suggestive moves, bending his knees and hooking one over Sasuke’s hip to give the younger Uchiha something to move against. It felt warm, this closeness. Sasuke smelled familiar, clear and sharp, like no one since Itachi had left Konoha. Itachi liked the dry rustle of skin on skin, the closeness.

Months had gone by of caresses, of kisses, of Sasuke lying close and touching him when Itachi had sex with the women who came to his tent. Now his body responded even before he’d decided if he wanted it to or not.

Itachi wasn’t against it though. He liked the closeness. After so many years of not letting anybody closer than arm's length, it was a novelty, being this close to another living being.

Itachi curled one of his hands into the wild riot his brother called hair and cupped the warm curve of his skull, pulling his down, closer, deeper into the kiss.

Sasuke groaned and shifted, leaning one elbow on the ground beside Itachi’s head and pressed into the kiss even more, turning it wetter, dirtier somehow, caging Itachi in the the circle of his body.

Sasuke broke the kiss to press his swollen lips against Itachi’s cheek, his eyes, trailing them to the temple.

Itachi curled his other hand into the loose shirt his brother wore and asked, taken aback by how rough his own voice sounded:

“Sasuke. How far do you want to take it?”

There was a hitch in his brother voice before Itachi heard his response, whispered against his temple.

“I don’t know.”

Sasuke bent his head, pressing his nose into Itachi’s neck.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know…” on each repetition, Sasuke’s voice was becoming louder.

Itachi barely realised that something was wrong when Sasuke’s hands gripped painfully where they’d been just touching before, and his brother pressed his face into the space where Itachi’s neck met his shoulder and _screamed_.

“I don’t know! Don’t know! Don’t know!!”

Shocked by the noise, it took Itachi moments to react. He used the leg he still had hooked over Sasuke’s hip and the hand curled over his younger brother’s shoulder to roll them over.

He used his taijutsu training to keep Sasuke still and grabbed his face to look into his eyes, spinning madly from Sharingan in to Mangekyou sharingan and back. Itachi leaned over his brother, his long hair, loosened from its ponytail during the kissing, fell forward and enclosed them in a small intimate space.

“Sasuke! Sasuke, _look_ at me,” he called, leaning into Sasuke’s line of sight.

And even though there’d been no Uchiha for the last decade to ask this, Sasuke spun his sharingan counter clockwise, opening the natural defenses any Uchiha had against genjutsu. Itachi pulled him under as gently as he could, showing him Water country mountain waterfalls in the middle of spring, the fine water mist filling the air and breaking the sunlight into a thousand colors, the way Itachi had seen it when he was fifteen and alone on one of the rare solo missions.

When he released the illusion, Sasuke was still heaving panicked breaths, but his eyes were calmer, slowly fading into the black.

“It’s okay,” Itachi murmured, still keeping his thighs tightly clamped over Sasuke’s hips but letting his tight grip on his brother’s shoulders ease into something more comforting. “It’s okay. Just do what feels right at the moment.”

Eventually the younger Uchiha closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it and then exhaling it very slowly, making a conscious effort to control his heartbeat.

It seemed things had to get worse before they could get better.


	7. Chapter 7

“Why did you keep me alive, Itachi-san?” Kisame’s voice was even and pleasant, like always. He rarely let people know what he was thinking, hiding under the mask of politeness.

Itachi looked down at the snake on his lap. Fuu was stretched out, belly up, his rattle hanging limply to the side, as Itachi scratched his fingers gently all along the exposed belly, provoking a happy gurgle from the utterly relaxed snake.

“I thought you might enjoy it,” he answered finally.

“Enjoy what?”

Itachi considered the snake thoughtfully before pressing his fingernails in harder and dragging them upwards against the scales. Fuu gave a series of tiny twitches and positively delighted gurgles.

“A chance to live a more meaningful life.”

Kisame snorted.

“I was doing something meaningful.”

Itachi looked at his long-time partner from the corner of his eye.

“That was just a madman’s dream. Peace brought on the bones of every living human. Who exactly was that peace for? Not for humans, that’s for sure. This on the other hand is real. Maybe slower and less showy, but all the more lasting for that.”

Kisame sighed.

“Why would you think I would even want to?”

“Out of all Akatsuki members, only you, Pain, and Konan didn’t enjoy the wholesale murder for the sake of carnage alone.”

Kisame huffed but said nothing.

“Here, hold this for me please.” Itachi thrust the half-comatose snake into Kisame’s hands and got up. The kiri ninja’s expression was hilarious as he found himself suddenly holding the utterly limp snake.

“Itachi-san.” There was a definite note of whining in Kisame’s voice as he kept himself very, very still, Fuu swinging loosely from his hold. “That is an extremely _poisonous_ snake.”

Itachi snorted, finishing wiping off the fallen leaves from his clothes.

“Right now I doubt he remembers his own name.”

“Still, I would _appreciate_ it, if you took it back, Itachi-san.”

“As you wish.” Itachi snagged the snake away from Kisame and started stuffing it in his pocket like an unused belt or some other inanimate accessory. Fuu didn’t protest aside from another wordless gurgle.

The tail didn't fit inside, so it was left hanging out. Itachi didn’t bother commenting on the expression on Kisame’s face at the sight. It was remarkably similar to what Sasuke habitually wore around Itachi anyway.

Without warning, Kisame’s hand closed around Itachi’s arm hard enough to hurt. Kisame was strong enough to cause harm with only his muscle strength; it was always a bad idea to get close enough to let him land a hand on you.

Itachi let his eyes bleed red.

“Let go.”

Kisame came even closer, so close Itachi could feel the heat of his body beside him. The kiri nin touched one fingertip to Itachi’s cheek and dragged it down, following the line of Itachi’s jawbone and lower, over the vulnerable line of his neck until it reached the collar of itachi’s cloak.

“Why? You seem to have lost the ability to say no recently.” Kisame rumbled right into Itachi’s ear. “You roll over for your brother constantly.”

Itachi turned to catch Kisame’s eye.

“Take that finger off me.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, Kisame watching and weighing him, something very odd in his face. Itachi was calm. If it came to a fight he could definitely hold his own, his chakra growing stronger every day.

Suddenly Kisame huffed a laugh, backing up.

“Oh, it’s a pleasure to see you again like this, Itachi-san. For a moment there I feared Sasuke has declawed you,” the kiri nin mused. “You always hated being touched. It disturbed me how easily you let him paw at you.”

Itachi let go of his sharingan, understanding that in his odd way, Kisame really cared.

“Sasuke is family,” Itachi stated firmly.

Kisame snorted.

“Do you know young sharks eat their siblings while still in their mother’s belly?”

Itachi, already heading back to the camp, paused and looked over his shoulder at Kisame, his long ponytails sliding over the rough material of his winter cloak.

“So I guess it’s good I am not a shark.”

“What are you then?” Kisame pressed, his face still holding that odd expression Itachi couldn’t understand.

Itachi hummed softly.

“The fisherman.”

 

*

 

There was a bite in the air, winter setting in for the long haul. The taste of the air was enough to tell Itachi they were a long way from Fire Country but he still didn’t know _where_ exactly. In moment’s like this, Itachi was struck by how ridiculous his life has become. Not only was he alive when he’d expected to be long dead. He was living in what could be called almost-peace with his brother. In what felt like a blink of an eye, Itachi went from being completely alone, body ravaged by sickness, waiting to die by Sasuke’s hand to...

...dealing with a bunch of missing nin, babysitting a clutch of adorable snakes, juggling sneaking out for training with his schedule for having sex with the various women Sasuke brought to him, and doing his best to keep his brother on an even keel.

There was was sense of violence to Sasuke that always took Itachi aback. He seemed cold, but in reality he had an incredibly explosive temper. It was also surprising that his sweet, loving younger brother was such an obvious front line fighter.

He was also damn overprotective.

Itachi had to buy off half the snakes and lie his ass off to the other half to get away from the constant supervision. Since he already had his sight back and knew he could activate the sharingan, he had even activated Mangekyou Sharingan for a few seconds before Sasuke freaked and covered his eyes, he wasn’t really worried about threats. But he needed to know the extent of his abilities, now more than ever.

Itachi could feel that something new, something else, like an itch in his eyes. He needed to see what his eyes could do now. As much as the sharingan was a cursed power, Itachi was honest enough to admit he couldn’t simply let it go. Not any more.

After judging he was far enough from the camp, he stopped to make dampening seals around the small clearing he’d found. They weren’t especially powerful, because he was sure if he tried anything high level he would have _somebody_ come and investigate immediately.

After he was sure the clearing had a proper dampening field around it, he took a deep breath before letting it out slowly and gathering his chakra. Slowly he let his Sharingan come to life, watching the world become awashed in red and slow down to almost nothing. Patterns of movement became so obvious, so predictable. He could see the faint patterns of chakra in every living being, could see the potential movement, could tell which leaves would fall at the next gust of wind. Itachi loved this. How ordered, how slow and _easy_ the world became. There wasn’t a single taijutsu style that sharingan couldn’t look through. His whole body was born to this, to speed and precision. The fully developed Sharingan didn’t even tax his chakra reserves, his body streamlining chakra use for this very purpose. Pushing more chakra into his eyes he let the Mangekyou come to life. There was this odd pulling sensation in his pupil as the additional tomoe changed shape.

The reds became deeper, the potential for movement even more clear. Now he could see all the weak places where chakra could be manipulated, all the possibilities to _bend_ it to his will. There were clear lines of potential visible to him now. It made him feel safe, centered to know that world rarely kept secrets from him. The chakra drain was considerable though. The eyes started hungrily sucking on his reserves. He was nowhere near top form but he was much healthier than he was in years. He knew he had hours yet before chakra exhaustion hit. Still, something felt different.

He could sense the tiny, loose ball of chakra that signalled some kind of small mammal. He reached out to the fragile threads and pulled at them gently, instigating his own chakra into the loose latticework of threads that suffused the squirrels mind. He tried to put an impression of warmth and safety into the creature's mind. It was something he did often, placing simple genjutsu on animals. Over the years he’d learned how to press more complicated images into their minds. Mostly images of people or objects to recognize.

It required miniscule amounts of chakra and tremendous control. What started as a way to train with limited resources available for a missing nin, had turned into standard operating procedure.

The squirrel ran down the tree and approached him, chittering quietly. Once it was almost on top of his feet, it stopped, obviously confused.

He released the compulsion, letting the small animal free. He could feel the difference in its mind though. It only possessed its own chakra, his; foreign one was gone, yet Itachi could sense the place where it _had been_. Instinctively he knew that he could reset the previous compulsion with even more ease than before. That was…new.

On a hunch, Itachi cut the flow of chakra to his eyes. He blinked, expecting the customary blurriness to appear.

His eyes stung, aching after being forced to the second stage after having been sealed for so many months. There was no blurriness, though.

Itachi was aware that his time was limited. Sooner or later somebody would come looking for him.

He directed his chakra to his eyes again, quickly shifting through stages until he could feel the foreign ability so close to activating.

With one more push, he broke through the resistance. It was like tearing shoji paper. The resistance both hard and fragile, parting easily under his determination.

The chakra drain was _ridiculous_.

He stumbled, his eyesight going dim. For an endless moment Itachi thought he overstretched, that he actually went blind from trying to activate the next stage, but then his eyes started clearing up. 

He blinked rapidly, now able to recognise vague shapes. 

With his heart pounding wildly against his ribs and eyes aching fiercely, Itachi straightened out. 

He was standing on a wooden pier, the planks old and oddly familiar. Instead of water, in front of him there was an endless stretch of darkness. 

It was very quiet.

“Damn cuz, you really are an overachiever.”

Itachi froze, his whole body seizing up. Many years had passed since he’d heard that voice. That relaxed cadence and light voice.

When he turned finally, he saw him just as he’d remembered him last he’d seen him. So young. So vibrant, with that crooked smile that had charmed Itachi since the very first time he’d seen it.

_“Shisui.”_

His cousin made a face at him.

“I hate the way you say my name,” Shisui muttered, rubbing his hand over his neck awkwardly and looking away.

“This is not a genjutsu,” Itachi said slowly, taking stock of his body. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Not exactly. I am here, but you are not where you were before.”

Itachi watched the spiky, unruly hair being teased into even more of a mess than usual and wondered if Shisui was really that young because in his memories, his cousin had always looked bigger somehow, more powerful.

But Shisui had just been fifteen when he died. Now, being almost twenty five, Itachi looked at Shisui and realized, maybe for the first time, just how young his cousin was. How young Itachi had been when his whole world was shattered.

The worst, most bitter thing was that he was sure that if he had been older, more experienced when the whole thing with his Clan had happened, he would have tried to find another way. There had been so many, many things he had done wrong, so many things he’d let himself be manipulated into. After over a decade of living mostly on his own, he saw things…differently.

That didn’t change the fact that standing in front of Shisui was, at the same time, an incredibly painful and joyous moment. It had been so very, very long.

“Where are we?” Itachi asked almost absently, focused way too much on Shisui and not enough on his surroundings.

“It’s a pocket universe. _Your_ pocket universe.” That caught Itachi’s attention. “Your ability is incredibly similar to Kamui, but not quite the same. No pair of Uchiha eyes develops the same way.”

Itachi finally tore his eyes away from Shisui and looked behind him, to the house standing quietly in a shade of old sakura trees.

His family home.

“Why are you here?”

“Come on little cousin,” Shisui huffed. “You must already suspect. It was your brother’s chakra that initiated the development. By the way, congrats on achieving the Eternal Mangekyo. Sasuke’s chakra changed your eyes enough that your body sees them now as more a transplant than your own. So no going blind for you now.” Shisui showed Itachi thumbs up. With both hands. “Sasuke’s chakra is almost purely yin, the contract with mother Queen assured it. He couldn’t have survived the signing if his very essence wasn’t carefully prepared for it. He can touch the world of the dead, the dark and shadowy realm that is the very essence of yin. Darkness, death, and stillness. Yang is life, light and chaos, constant movement. Whatever yang there was in him, it was burned out under Mother Queen’s touch.” Itachi listened to Shisui and thought about Sasuke, about his inability to express emotions, his depression and detachment from life, his obvious and extreme post traumatic stress. It explained a lot of his frame of mind, if his yin side was so heavily dominating. In light of that, it became even more debatable if that were even possible for Sasuke to feel centered, happy again.

“You are a different matter entirely. You are in balance; neither yang nor yin energy is prevalent. It made for… interesting development. You can not call the dead like Sasuke, can not see them or make them do your bidding. But the connection you have with your brother means _I_ can come here, to act as a guide of sorts. This dimension is…visible, for lack of a better description, to those that want to look for it.”

Itachi looked at Shisui again, terrified suddenly that his victims, his _family_ , would be able to come here too.

“Don’t look like that,” Shisui scolded. “Most of them moved on a long time ago. Those that still linger hold no ill will towards you.” The young Uchiha smiled gently at Itachi. “The dead don’t keep grudges. That’s reserved for the living.”

“So why did you come here?” Itachi pressed, preferring to focus on the mystery rather than what Shisui was saying.

“You need a guide.”

Itachi cast a disbelieving look at his dead cousin.

“Just like that?”

Shisui smiled, his eyes warm and peaceful like they’d not been for a long time since before his death.

“Just like that.”

“You always were a better liar than me.” Itachi said gently.

“I was just _better_ than you, Itachi-chan.” There was so much sass in Shisui’s voice.

Itachi remembered enough of his cousin to realize that there wouldn’t be any chance of pulling more information out of Shisui once the man made up his mind.

“Guide me then, if that is what you came for.” 

Shisui huffed again and passed Itachi on the way towards the house.

“Yes, I’d better; you already look a bit green around the gills from chakra drain.”

Itachi stumbled, barely managing to catch himself on the nearest tree trunk. His vision swam.

“Is it always going to be like this?” he asked weakly, trying to regulate his breathing.

“If you have proper anchors the strain will be considerably less, on the other hand watching the eternally graceful Uchiha Itachi fall flat on his face is kinda amusing, I must admit.”

Somehow Itachi forgot that Shisui _lived_ to make fun of Itachi.

“Anchors?”

“Open the door, Itachi.”

When Itachi raised his head he was standing in front of the door. His hand was shaking when he reached out to open it. 

The wooden door opened without a sound, not even a whisper. Beyond there was not his childhood home, but an endless corridor with evenly spaced door on each side. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them. 

Without Shisui’s prompting he opened the first door on the right. 

There was nothing behind them, just a black nothingness.

He opened the next one and the next, always finding the same thing.

_Nothing_.

He turned to look at Shisui, or maybe just Itachi’s hallucination of him, questioningly.

“I think you were always jealous of my shunshin,” Shisui said with a smirk. “This ability is much like that. You can place a mark in a chosen place and one of those doors will always lead to that place. Theoretically, once the bridge between that place and this universe is built, it should cost you barely anything in chakra.”

Itachi turned it over in his mind. It _fit_. It _felt_ right, this knowledge.

“And building the bridge?”

Shisui pointed his thumb behind his shoulder, where they had come from.

“You tell me, considering you just built one?”

Itachi’s vision was getting steadily blurrier and he started feeling really sick. But when he managed to focus his eyes for a moment, he saw that the wooden pier wasn’t stretching out into nothingness anymore but into the very familiar clearing, with it’s slightly frosted over trees and grey sky overhead.

“And I think it’s time for you to go back.” Shisui’s voice was teasing. His cousin pushed him, making him stumble forward as his world went completely black.

*

Hajime puffed into existence right over Sasuke’s shoulders. The weight equal to an average man appearing suddenly on his shoulders was enough to make him stumble. it was only a handy tree trunk that saved Sasuke from face-planting in the dirt.

_I do not approve!_ Hajime hissed at him, giving his torso almost painful squeeze on his way down. _I don’t approve at all!_ Hajime slithered away with an extremely offended air about him.

Next was Mirai, puffing into existence a few feet away from Sasuke and making a beeline for him. She reached his leg, climbed up, and curled around his ankle so hard she almost cut off his circulation. She said nothing, but radiated misery so hard she didn’t really need to speak.

The three rattlers, Fuu, Yuu, and Sia came next, offended and angry, the rattles vibrating violently.

_Fix it Sasuke!_ Yuu was yelling at him. _We are not going to take it lying down!_ Fuu almost growled. _There’s going to bloodshed if you don’t do something about that travesty!_ Sia hissed, so angry she was almost glowing with it.

Sasuke blinked, mystified, at the parade of angry snakes that complained and then stalked off, as much as a snake could stalk off, full of anger and offence.

It didn’t took a genius to figure out he needed to find Itachi. The snakes adored him so much, he was the only one that could rile them up quite like this.

*

“Itachi?” Sasuke called, approaching the barrier that surrounded his brother. It was only a dampening field and broke easily under his push.

His brother was lying on the ground, limbs akimbo, the heavy winter cloak fanned around him. What caught his attention though were the crows. There were dozens if not hundreds of them. They sat on every tree, every branch, cawing and jumping around, flying tight circles above the clearing.

They were making a horrible noise, giving out a wide range of sounds. It might have looked ominous, but there was a rather joyous air to all that movement and sound.

In the middle of it all lay his brother, almost covered in the black birds. There were three, no four of them perched on the ground around his head, all of them busily _preening_ his brother’s hair. Some perched on his legs, cawing loudly and hopping from one leg to the other. Some were, very obviously, riffling through his pockets. The more enterprising ones even managed to pry Itachi’s shirt off from the waistband of his pants. What they were hoping to find underneath Itachi’s clothes, Sasuke was at a loss. The were also five birds smushed under his brother’s arm. Itachi seemed to be doing his best to gather as many birds in a hug as was physically possible. With legs and wings akimbo, the crows in Itachi’s grip weren’t making even a pip of protest. Itachi was cooing unintelligible words of praise at the birds, and they crooned back at him.

Sasuke looked at the lazy, clumsy way his brother was petting the birds, almost stuffing a finger into one’s beak. There was something…odd going on.

He focused on Itachi’s chakra, only to find it extremely low, if stable. His older sibling seemed to have exhausted himself doing _something_ that brought his birds back. Sasuke looked at his brother’s face, relaxed, almost slack with pleasure and his completely glazed eyes that weren’t tracking movement at all.

Concerned, he crouched down beside his brother, the crows not bothering to pay attention to Sasuke when they had Itachi to fuss over. As he watched, one of the birds landed close to Itachi’s face and his brother turned his head enough to rub his cheek against the bird, almost flattening it to the ground in the process. Both his brother’s and the birds eyes got half-lidded and glazed in pleasure.

“Itachi,” he called again, reaching to turn his brother’s face to him and enforce eye contact, hoping it would focus his very obviously _stoned_ brother. “Itachi.”

After a few moments, Itachi blinked lazily and smiled up at Sasuke.

“Sasuke.” His voice was as slow as molasses, stretching the name into an ungodly amount of syllables. “Aren’t they pretty?” He mumbled, somehow getting ahold of even more birds to hold against his chest.

They still weren’t protesting, even though they were fairly squished already.

“So pretty. Such good birds.. So good.” He kept murmuring praises to the birds, very obviously forgetting about Sasuke.

When Sasuke reached to pull his brother’s face to him again, his fingers brushed the inky black feather’s of a nearest bird.

His fingers tingled, and if possible, his brother seemed even more stoned that before.

Led by a hunch, Sasuke activated his sharingan and looked at the birds.

There was something off about them, something different from ordinary animals. Even different than summoning animals. A slight shimmer in the air, but nothing concrete, nothing he could put his finger on.

He activated the Mangekyo to better see the surrounding chakra and almost stumbled back. There were untriggered illusions, thousands of them, making the air almost drip with them. His bloodline and the highly developed Mangekyou made Sasuke immune to all those traps, but if a civilian or a low level shinobi had stumbled into the clearing right now, Sasuke would never leave this place with his mind intact.

Curious, he looked closer at the birds fussing over Itachi, one very obviously trying to feed him a worm. He decided to think about the fact that Itachi had not only let the bird stuff that worm into his mouth but also dutifully chewed and swallowed it. Right now, he watched the birds closer. While his brother was definitely capable of casting genjutsu, the sheer amount of the traps and the fact that they weren’t meant for any particular person, would take years to weave together. Itachi didn't have time or the strength to have done it in recent months. It meant that the illusions came when the birds came.

When he focused his eyes, Sasuke could see a slight shimmer over the birds. Catching one distracted bird in his hands, he brought it closer. His hands tingled. The bird started cawing its head off, the sound different from the almost gentle calls directed at his brother. It was obviously protesting and struggling a little, but Sasuke held on. This close, touching it, Sasuke could easily tell that the bird carried hundreds of untriggered illusions on _itself_. Or more specifically on it’s feathers. There were so many genjutsu traps. Some of them he could recognize by the chakra patterns, the ones affecting spatial orientation, eyesight, hearing… Those designed to induce fear and confusion. Dozens he couldn’t even guess at.

Sasuke could see it was his brother’s work. Something that must have taken him years to do. Almost each feather had a different illusion trap transcribed upon it. He looked up at the hundreds of birds in the clearing, now that he knew what he was looking at, it was so obvious. Whoever came close to the birds would be immediately under Itachi’s influence, without ever meeting the man personally.

It was ingenious…

The bird in his hands struggled for real and Sasuke felt clumsy pawing at his arm.

“Let...go,” Itachi pawed at Sasuke again, or at least attempted. His hand missed and slapped the cold earth beside Sasuke. “Don’t tease the crows... Pretty birds, good birds…”

Sasuke looked at his brother again and considered the chakra exhaustion and the amount of illusion traps that was making even him feel a bit sick.

“Are you high from your own genjutsu traps?” he asked, finally letting the bird go.

“... pretty, so pretty…” His older brother only lolled his head, crooning under his breath.

“Right.” He decided, eyeing another bird that had approached with a particularly fat and disgusting beetle held at the ready. “That’s enough birds for you.”

“No!” Itachi protested weakly, trying to hug the crows already in his hold tighter.

Sasuke took hold of his brother’s arm and tried to pull him up.

Itachi kind of oozed between his fingers, falling back to the ground completely bonelessly. The only upside was that he lost his hold on all but two of the crows.

“Come on Itachi, we are going back. You need to sleep this off.” His brother wasn’t listening to him though, clumsily dragging another unresisting bird to himself to hug the stuffing out of. “Come on.” Sasuke pulled his brother up again. Itachi made a very convincing impersonation of an overcooked noodle, slowly oozing through Sasuke’s fingers to lie in a stoned puddle on the ground. Again. “No more birds for you today.”

That got through to Itachi and suddenly Sasuke had a face full of bony fingers pushing him away as Itachi tried to squirm out of his hold, reaching for the blasted crows again.

“No…. Pretty, pretty…”

“Oh for… Fine!” the younger Uchiha snapped. “Take one bird and I am taking you back to the tent to sleep it off!”

Itachi gave him wet-eyed, betrayed look, his bottom lip pushed out in what was obviously a pout.

Sasuke would never admit it out loud but he felt like the worst kind of bastard when he had to deny Itachi the crows again.

Eventually they settled on two birds, one riding on Itachi’s head and preening him furiously, one held like a stuffed toy against his brother’s chest. They made an undignified sight, Sasuke trying to hold onto his brother as Itachi did his best to ooze out of Sasuke’s hold and slump to the ground with those blasted birds again. The damn things were following them every step of the way; Sasuke could swear that cawing sounded far too amused for simple birds.

As he managed to finally stuff his stoned brother into their tent, losing one of the two birds on the way, he had to contend himself with the cold war taking place inside. In one corner Itachi curled up on the bedroll, the last crow still busily preening his hair. Considering the length of the hair and the size of the crow, it was going to take some time. In the other corner was a huge ball of misery and offence consisting of Sasuke’s snakes watching the crow with offended hurt.

*

“You always let me touch you.” Sasuke breathed the words against Itachi’s skin, his voice low, breathy and somehow still fierce, still full of that unspoken anger that burned cold inside him every hour of every day. In a way, Sasuke was a vessel shaped specifically to hold that inescapable rage, to hoard it. It was Itachi’s doing, in all the ways that mattered so it was his duty to _see ___it too. He of all people would never have the comfort of turning his eyes away, of pretending something didn’t exist just for his ease of mind. “Would you let me fuck you?” Sasuke asked in that surprisingly low voice of his, one hand closing firmly over Itachi’s hip, fingers digging in almost painfully.

“If I pushed, would you do it?” Sasuke rolled his body against Itachi, the move more overtly sexual, more deliberate than anything he’d ever done before. Sasuke was heavy and undeniable lying over Itachi. Close enough that the older Uchiha could smell the now almost permanent ozone and faint whiff of sweat on his skin. Sasuke was pale, even for an Uchiha, and built bigger than most. He was already heavier than Itachi and the length of his limbs suggested he would be even bigger, even more physically powerful when he got older. 

Itachi made sure to keep his body open and relaxed, to hold Sasuke gently in the cradle of his hips, pushing into the almost painful grip, grinding bone against bone. Sasuke’s anger didn't scare him because it was justified and held in check. For all the rage shimmering under his skin, Sasuke very rarely lost control. Itachi pushed his fingers into his younger brother’s hair and scratched his fingernails very gently over the hot skin he found there, always careful to project only acceptance, taking his brother’s weight over himself as naturally as breathing. 

“If you truly wanted to?” Itachi said very gently, keeping his voice even and true. “Yes,” he answered finally, pressing his lips to his brother’s cheek for a moment. The skin was so smooth, so warm beneath his lips. So very fragile. “But if you wanted to do it just to punish me and hurt yourself in the process, the answer would be no.” Itachi let his voice become firm, making it obvious his decision was final. 

He was calm though. Oddly enough even this shocking question was something good, a sign that things were moving on from the status quo he and Sasuke had maintained for too long. 

Sasuke lowered his head, his unruly hair falling into his face. Itachi couldn’t really see more than the sharp angle of his jaw and a pale stretch of neck. He ran his free hand over the wide shoulders and down the tense back. He could feel the shift of tight muscles stretched over bone. It was still so hard to reconcile that small child he remembered with this young man, this fierce warrior. It filled Itachi with pride and inexplicable sorrow at the same time. 

Sasuke lowered his head even more, nudging his surprisingly cold nose into Itachi’s cheek, until Itachi tilted his head to the side, exposing his neck. 

“And who would be the one to decide my intentions?” Sasuke’s voice was nothing more than a murmur against Itachi’s neck, his teeth grazing the skin there very lightly, exactly over the pulsing carotid. 

Itachi wondered if Sasuke realized just how threatening he was right then. He used his greater weight to pin Itachi down, his body so close Itachi could easily feel the wiry strength in his muscles, the heat and the power in him. Itachi ran his hand back up Sasuke’s back, smoothing out as much tension as he could. He skimmed a gentle caress to the naked nape of his brother’s neck before sliding his hand into the short, messy hair to massage the incredibly hot skin there. 

“You really think,” Itachi murmured quietly, stretching his own neck even more to give Sasuke better access. “That I wouldn’t recognize hatred when it’s staring me in the face?” 

The body over him tensed as Sasuke raised himself on his arms, shaking his hair away from his eyes, and pinning Itachi with a look. 

Sasuke’s breathing hitched and Itachi wondered if Sasuke was even aware he was staring at Itachi with his Mangekyou activated. The red starburst in his pupils were oddly lovely for a mark of something this dangerous. 

Sasuke opened his mouth to say something but Itachi was quicker. He pressed his hand against his brother's lips to silence him. 

“No. Don’t speak.” Itachi looked into Sasuke’s eyes, his own eyes dark grey and defenseless. “Don’t deny it. I know you love me too. And that is what makes it all so much harder. 

Sasuke shuddered against him. Once, but remained quiet. 

“Whatever you choose, I will always love you. Will always stand beside you.” Itachi touched his brother’s face and pushed the messy hair away from his forehead, making Sasuke look younger, more vulnerable with his face exposed like that. “You have followed me all these years. It’s time I followed where you lead, Sasuke. Your eyes, ” Itachi dragged his fingers down over his brother's eyes. Sasuke closed them, letting Itachi’s fingers skim his vulnerable eyelids. The thin flesh fluttered under the careful touch. “They seem to burn so much more brightly than mine ever could.” 

Sasuke said nothing, but he exhaled loudly, his warm breath washing over Itachi’s hand. His eyes were half-lidded but intense, watching Itachi with so many emotions, Itachi couldn’t even start identifying them. 

Eventually Sasuke dropped his body down, half on, half off Itachi. One of his hands wormed it’s way under Itachi’s shirt. The rough, calloused palm spread over Itachi’s pectoral as Sasuke pushed his face into his neck. His brother’s cold nose was pushing into the delicate skin at the juncture of Itachi’s neck and jaw, breaths puffing slightly over the skin and causing goose bumps. 

“Sasuke?” Itachi threaded his fingers into his brother’s rough hair again. 

The younger Uchiha was quiet for a long time. He was still hard; Itachi could feel it clearly against his stomach. 

“Go to sleep.” Sasuke’s voice was rough against Itachi’s skin but his body remained very, very still. 

Eventually Itachi drifted off, oddly comforted by his brother’s closeness. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, light in the tunnel, next chapter is the last in this fic! There will be one more fic in the series and I will be officially done with the bastard, erm, fic.

Itachi watched Aiko curiously. It felt a bit awkward to look her in the eye. Now that he could see her, he realised how much easier it was to remain emotionally distant towards the women that Sasuke brought to their tent.

Looking at the young woman, it was impossible to stay unaffected.

Aiko was one of the younger ones, looked Sasuke’s age if not a bit younger. She had dark brown hair which she wore in a long ponytail and had big Uchiha black eyes. Unlike her older friends, she looked Itachi straight in the eye. It took courage to do that, especially for a woman that was a second generation lab specimen. It didn’t escape his notice that the kids around camp had scars. Surgical scars, mostly centered around their eyes. Without asking, he already knew the children in the camp were the only ones who had survived whatever experiments were done by Orochimaru and Kabuto.

“Aiko-san,” Itachi asked as gently as he knew how. “You know we have access to a hospital. Why chose to do this…” he indicated her presence in his tent. “When you could avoid having to be intimate with me.”

The girl straightened out a little more, raising her chin proudly. In that moment it was very easy to see the Uchiha blood in her.

“No,” she said firmly. “I’ve had enough of being treated impersonally. I want to make my own choices. I want to be _involved_ in what is happening to my body. I want to…” She blushed suddenly and broke eye contact for a moment. “To sleep with you, Itachi-san,” Aiko finished only stuttering a little. “Or with Sasuke-sama,” she added looking fearlessly in Sasuke’s direction.

Sasuke blinked at her, obviously taken aback.

“I want you to be involved in this too. I want the child to mean something to you more than just a carrier of your genes.” She exhaled loud and slow. “I don’t want to be an experiment any longer.”

Just like Sasuke, Aiko was too young to have to think that way. Too young to have already lost any illusions and dreams she might have ever have had.

It occurred to Itachi that he couldn’t keep acting the way he had until now. All fourteen of the women had decided to tie their lives to the Uchiha brothers. They decided to give them children to rebuild their clan. They deserved more acknowledgement from him, more than a quick fumble where he wasn’t participating at all.

“I’m sorry Aiko-san. It appears I was unintentionally cruel.” Itachi could feel Sasuke’s eyes boring into him.

This time it was the girl who blinked at him.

“Itachi-san, you were always very polite and careful,” she said, still obviously bewildered.

“I could have done better,” Itachi said quietly, extending his hand towards Aiko. Still a little bewildered, she accepted it and at his urging shifted to sit closer.

Itachi kissed her and it was all very awkward and clumsy for a long time. She was eager, but also obviously inexperienced, and truthfully, Itachi’s whole experience with women was limited to paid companions servicing him in brothels, or the late night visits to his and Sasuke’s tent where the most he did was not protest while the women did all the work.

By staying passive, Itachi shifted all responsibility to Sasuke and whoever was visiting him. It was an easy, cowardly way out. So he decided to break that habit right then and there.

*

“I was the one who had sex, yet you are the one who looks like he’s enjoying the afterglow,” Itachi said watching amused, as his brother curled around him like a well-fed kitten. Sasuke was hard, Itachi could feel it against his hip, but his brother didn’t seem aware of it at all. He was so relaxed he was as limp as a noodle.

“Hmm.” Sasuke made a vague sound, pressing his nose more firmly under Itachi’s jaw and very obviously intending to go to sleep. He was a warm, heavy weight all along Itachi’s left side.

Itachi couldn’t rid himself of the fond amusement he felt at Sasuke’s behavior. His brother was already half-asleep, his breath puffing softly against Itachi’s skin in regular intervals and _tickling like mad_.

He thought about the expression on Sasuke’s face when Aiko broke the unspoken rule and instead of getting dressed quickly and quietly, leaving as unobtrusively as possible, she stretched over Itachi’s body to catch a fistful of Sasuke’s shirt and reeled him in for a kiss. It wasn’t a gentle peck on the lips either. It was wet and deep. Aiko was gloriously naked, her more than generous breasts pressed against Sasuke’s chest, her hair, now loose from its bun, falling everywhere, pale skin flushed with exertion. She looked truly beautiful to Itachi. However unexpected, Itachi actually _liked_ the sex. Liked the women in the camp, liked that the sex had a purpose of creating life, liked the knowledge that the women would be a permanent part of his life from now on. It made warmed something inside him when he thought that soon, Aiko would carry his child. He wanted it. All of it. The sex. The women. The children. Sasuke. To _live_.

Sasuke was wide-eyed, holding his arms to his sides as if afraid to touch all that naked skin on display. Aiko made a small, pleased sound against Sasuke’s mouth before withdrawing.

Itachi would keep the memory of his brother’s flushed, wide-eyed face for a very long time. He looked adorably flustered, not knowing where to put his hands or glance, his anger and depression forgotten for once.

Once dressed, Aiko gave them both an unrestrained smile before leaving the tent, her movements sure and free. It was admirable, how courageous she was in light of the life she’d led till now.

Itachi stayed still until he was sure Sasuke was deeply asleep before he wiggled out from his brother’s grip, knowing that if he stayed like this, his whole left side would go numb. Sasuke had a tendency to sleep as still as if somebody had frozen him in place. By the morning, Itachi would have an epic case of pins and needles. He’d learned that from experience. Still, he couldn’t deny that something had changed between them. Sasuke was still keeping very close to Itachi, insisting on being there when Itachi had sex with one of the women from the camp. But something was different. Sasuke wasn't pushing for more obvious sexual contact any more. After the confrontation about actually having intercourse, they seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement. Sasuke was possessive, insisting on extended physical contact in all situation. Itachi suspected he was just touch-starved. After the massacre, the seven-year-old child was left essentially alone with his trauma. Itachi’s own actions had convinced Sasuke he needed to be self sufficient, alone and distanced from anyone who might offer him love or comfort. Now, Sasuke was letting that long-denied need be fulfilled at last. Itachi suspected that the fact they kept crossing from platonic into the sexual touch so often had something to do with Sasuke’s age. The only physical contact Sasuke had had in the last eight years that wasn’t aimed to hurt him was sex. It was little wonder that Sasuke couldn’t separate positive physical contact from sexual contact any more.

*

Sasuke didn’t expect Itachi to evade his reaching hand. He stared, surprised at the space between them.

He looked up at his brother, but Itachi was simply standing before him, eyes dark grey and soft, a relaxed look on his face. When Sasuke took a step forwards, Itachi took a step back, keeping the distance between them.

Sasuke took another step and Itachi backed away again. This time Sasuke was sure he saw his brother’s lips curl up in a gentle smile for a moment, before the expression was wiped away by a frown in concentration.

Sasuke couldn’t ask Itachi for sparring. There were many reasons for that, but mostly two that prevailed. One was that Itachi was only starting to heal now, his stamina, strength and reserves still extremely low, and the other, the most important one, was the fact that Sasuke couldn’t trust himself with even a mock fight against Itachi. He couldn’t trust that the instincts he’d honed for the last eight years wouldn’t take over and make him switch from mock to real fighting.

Yet Itachi was very obviously inviting him to chase. There was something very primal in how ninja were raised, how aware of potential violence they were. What Itachi was doing, facing him, yet running away at the same time was an obvious ploy, and Sasuke itched to catch him, to close the distance between them and prove Itachi he _could_.

Before he knew it, he was running and so was Itachi. He took to the trees and Sasuke followed. He kept running faster and faster, and Itachi always stayed just two paces before him. He was adding more and more chakra to his legs, trying to catch his brother off guard with sudden bursts of speed, but Itachi only laughed and matched Sasuke’s pace.

Growling, Sasuke put his all into the chase, speeding so fast the small branches whipped him painfully. The stinging didn't even register in the exhilaration of the headlong rush. This wasn’t even about catching Itachi, not really, just about the rush, the burn in his muscles, in his lungs.

At some point they abandoned any pretense of stealth in favor of speed and rushed madly from branch to branch, feet barely gaining purchase before they jumped again. Sasuke could hear his own heart pounding wildly in his ears, could hear laughter which took him a moment to realise came from his own throat, odd feeling bubbling over.

It didn’t matter how much speed he put on, his brother always managed to keep in front of him, his long ponytail flapping madly in the air behind him.

Suddenly, Itachi gave an undignified yelp as his foot missed the next branch completely. Sasuke reached out to grab hold of him but instead of letting Sasuke catch him, Itachi jerked Sasuke even further off balance, laughing at him as they plunged downwards, leaves and branches everywhere. Sasuke just managed to glimpse a stretch of brilliant blue before the shock of hitting cold water pushed the breath right out of him.

The water closed over his head, enclosing him in sudden quiet. Beside him he could feel his brother calmly turning towards the softly filtered sunlight above them. He kicked his feet, swimming towards the surface, the eerie quiet of water buffering him almost gently. He and Itachi broke the surface almost at the same time, Itachi laughing out loud and Sasuke sputtering.

“You are insane!” he yelled at his unrepentant sibling.

Itachi hiccuped, snorted some water out of his nose and continued to giggle.

With a sigh, Sasuke let himself float freely in the cool water. His body was overheated, his heartbeat still beating an insane rhythm against his ribs, and lungs working overtime. It felt nice, just floating in the still lake, letting the water buffer him, letting all the tension out of his body. In a moment he would probably get cold, but right now it felt incredibly pleasurable, the cool water and the sound of his brother’s dwindling giggles.

“You are far too serious little brother,” Itachi said finally, between dying snickers.

Sasuke only huffed, his eyes focused on the blue-grey sky above them and closed his hand around Itachi’s thin wrist.

They stayed like this, both floating in the cold water and gazing up at the serene sky. In that moment, Sasuke felt something old and bitter uncurl and dissipate in his chest a little. Not a lot, but enough to give him hope.

Sasuke had no idea how long they floated, cold water slowly leeching their warmth away. At some point Yuuta decided he’d had enough of being the rope around Sasuke’s hips, especially with them being in water, and transformed back into his own form. His triangular head rose daintily over the water as he swam lazy quiet circles around them. He was a swamp snake and loved a good swim, his light brown color making him barely visible in the dark water.

“Shisui was the one to really teach me how to cast genjutsu.” Itachi’s voice was soft. Sasuke didn’t look at him, didn’t want to break the spell of serenity over them both. “He would take me to the Nakano River and turn the shallows into an endless ocean.”

Yuuta made another lazy circuit around them, absolutely soundless.

“It was the first time I saw an ocean,” Itachi said slowly, his wrist lax in Sasuke’s grip. “I can still remember the salty smell, the fierce winds, and the frothing waves. The sky was a shade I had never seen before. Shisui would show me the ocean in all the different states. There’d be beautiful, sunny days with sand so hot it burned my feet, there were grey windy evenings that cut me to the core. Calm, fierce, everything in between.” Itachi’s voice was painting an image by itself. Calm, musing, a little far away. Sasuke could tell it was a fond memory. “It was years before I got to see a real ocean.”

“Was it like in the illusion?” Sasuke asked, sensing an odd energy from Itachi.

“Yes. Every detail, every mood. From the taste of the air to the feel of the sand beneath my feet. It was perfect.”

Sasuke turned that over in his mind. With an active Sharingan all Uchiha could reconstruct images in perfect detail. Between their eidetic memory and the knack for illusion, the genjutsu could project the images perfectly.

And then it clicked, the feeling of awe he was sensing from Itachi and the true moral of the story.

“Shisui never saw the ocean, did he?”

Sasuke didn’t need to look at Itachi to know the man was smiling.

“No he didn’t. He only heard other people describing it. I think he wanted to see it though.”

_Cold_ Yuuta complained finally when the sun started hiding behind thick clouds.

Sasuke grunted something in lieu of a reply and let go of Itachi’s wrist to turn in the water and start swimming towards the shore.

*

The downside of taking a swim in a lake in early winter was that after the sun had set, it was _bitterly_ cold.

Their clothes were dry because Itachi knew a jutsu that evaporated the moisture in them. It left the scent of freshly ironed linen. It reminded him painfully of his childhood home, the times when life was easier, or at the very least less bloody.

As they sat huddled as close to the small fire Itachi thought about how this was a moment he never expected to have with his brother. The sky above them was clear and speckled with dozens of coldly-shining stars. Night came fast in the mountains.

Itachi watched as Sasuke blew small katon jutsu at the gathered stones to warm them up, Yuuta and Mirai already waiting to get toasty on them. Sasuke accused him of spoiling the snakes, but Itachi wasn’t the one sitting cold and wasting chakra to make sure the snakes had some warm rocks to snuggle up to.

Besides, most of the snakes were still terribly offended and refused to talk to him. It didn’t help that the crows were possessive as hell and tended to grab whatever snake they could carry off. It was a wonder there weren’t any casualties yet.

“Sasuke,” Itachi called his brother gently, watching the way Sasuke’s muscles tensed with every controlled exhale, the way his lids lowered to half-mast when the flame burst from his lips. The flames loved him. He hoped that someday they would be able to spar against each other without it turning into a true fight. “We are running out of time.”

Sasuke slid his gaze towards Itachi for a moment, before focusing on the katon he was breathing out.

“Chiasa, Minako, and Hana are confirmed. Minako is starting to show already. The camp is no longer a suitable place to live. Between Karin, Juugo, and me we set up a training schedule for the kids, and three of them have enough chakra and potential to become ninja. Definitely enough to train.”

Sasuke nudged Mirai towards the warmed stones, Yuuta already twining himself around two of the biggest ones. Itachi his hands with chipped nail polish. They looked surprisingly delicate for the power contained in them.

“I know,” Sasuke said slowly, never taking his eyes of the snakes as they squabbled over the warmest spot. Mirai was losing the tussle, Yuuta being one of the more ruthless snakes in the bunch.

“We need a village. A home. Steady access to a hospital and medic nins. A pregnancy coach, shops…”

“I know!” Sasuke snapped, turning his eyes to Itachi again. “The war seems inevitable now. The shinobi villages are separated into two firm camps. Whatever Madara is planning, he’s going to have that war start no matter what. Danzo is going to be at the Five Kage Summit in two weeks. After I kill him, we will negotiate with a village into taking us in. The war will help. Most villages will be desperate for strong fighters, especially since Akatsuki did a wonderful job of hunting the jinchuuriki out of existence.”

Itachi put more wood into the fire pit. 

“You want to make a statement.” Attacking a hokage at a summit full of other kages was a clear declaration of power.

“The Uchiha were betrayed by their Hokage from the very beginning. They were a founding clan, yet the Senju kept spreading distrust and fear of us, making us respond in kind. Then Danzo instigated the extermination and _no one_ protested. Not the revered Third Hokage, nor any of the councilmen.” Sasuke’s voice became strained, cold hatred suffusing every word. “I need to show them what happens to those who betray us. To those who would use us without mercy. To those who made us into what we are today.” 

Itachi tore his eyes away from his brother. He never learned how to hate anyone but himself, couldn’t understand how damaged Sasuke must have become to turn from that sweet child into someone whose heart was harder than stone.

“Make them know why,” Itachi said finally, knowing that there would be no talking Sasuke out of this. His brother had already capitulated enough, allowing the vengeance to end after Danzo’s death. It was more than Itachi expected. 

He thought about the possible set-up of the fight, the consequences and the threats.

“You shouldn’t fight the other Kages. They are very powerful and not your enemy. We need to let them know the reason for our attack at Danzo, make him the bad guy so to speak.” Itachi shifted position, coming a bit closer to the fire. His body still tended to lose heat quickly. “A genjutsu to explain. We will use my crows, my Mangekyou, and Kisame’s skills to cast the illusion and yours to deliver the message. It will be very important to pinpoint all the sensors and catch them first. They are the most dangerous to us. In the confusion you, Karin, and Suigetsu will get inside. Karin will lead you to Danzo. You can’t attack him before revealing the implanted eyes though.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, not understanding that last part.

“Why?”

“There’s an old law, I think it exists in all villages in similar form, that states that bloodline theft is punishable by death if the ones dealing the punishment are the members of the bloodline that was stolen.”

Sasuke snorted.

“You want us to actually get off scot free from that?”

“I want to make an _impression_. We’re dangerous but not unreasonable,” Itachi said firmly,already a thousand plans running through his head. 

“How many people do you want to take under the genjutsu?” Sasuke asked. “There will be five Kages, each having at a minimum two ANBU-level guards, and who only knows how many samurai bodyguards.”

Itachi looked up at Sasuke and let his lips curl up slightly.

“All of them. We are the Uchiha, after all. There is not and never will be a clan as good at genjutsu.” 

Sasuke didn’t take his eyes from Itachi.

“You want to _show off_.”

Itachi protested, “You know how important good showmanship is in psychological warfare.”

Sasuke’s eyes were getting steadily wider, obviously remembering their earlier fights.

“You actually like all the drama and posturing,” he said wonderingly. 

“I like to make a proper _impression_. It discourages those less determined.” Itachi tried to salvage the situation.

“You. Love. Showing. Off.” Itachi felt the underscoring of every word was underserved and impolite, but didn’t have any more arguments.

“Back to the topic at hand,” Itachi said firmly, ignoring the heat in his ears. “How many people can you summon?”

Sasuke sighed and got up to check if the wrap he habitually wore around his hips was dry enough to sleep on. The thick cloth was sufficiently dry now after Itachi’s incredibly useful jutsu he’d stolen from Kisame, of all people, and the fire. 

Efficiently, Sasuke shook it out and created a bed on the cleared patch of ground near the fire.

One of Itachi’s crows called out to him, an easy sound meaning that there was no danger anywhere closeby, and that they would keep watch. Itachi always made sure to hunt enough game to be able to feed the birds. They spent so much time acting as lookout for him or trailing people on his behalf that they didn’t really have time to take care of themselves. 

Itachi watched as his brother toed off his boots and turned to look expectantly at Itachi. It was funny really, how he looked both demanding and shy at the same time, while trying to get Itachi to sleep with him.

With a soft snort building somewhere deep in his chest, Itachi rose and shook off his outer clothes before sliding into the folds of the blanket. Sasuke said nothing, just slid in after Itachi, curling his body around his brother, and resting his head on Itachi’s chest, one ear pressed flat to Itachi’s pectoral muscle.

Sasuke smelled like lake water and ozone. He was very warm and heavy, his body radiating power. It always, always stunned Itachi just how different Sasuke was. His hands were long and elegant, but also already bigger than Itachi’s, indicating that he himself still had some serious growing to do. 

There was a bony knee pushing into his thigh and an even bonier elbow making a bruise in his side. Itachi sometimes thought that he sustained more bruises from sleeping with Sasuke than he did from fighting him. His brother’s leg ended up over his, the sharp line of Sasuke’s jawbone digging into Itachi’s chest. 

After some more shifting and rearranging of limbs, Sasuke went from tense to boneless. Itachi could feel a small smile forming on his lips at his brother’s peculiar habits. The possessiveness Itachi didn't mind. It felt reassuring somehow to know that finally, finally he wasn’t alone any more.

His hands were cold so he decided to take advantage of the fact that Sasuke was using him as his personal pillow, and he wriggled the hand Sasuke was lying on under his brother’s shirt and spread his palm over the warm smooth skin of Sasuke’s back. Here and there Itachi could feel raised skin, old scars that had healed well. He wondered how many of them he had been responsible for.

Sasuke twitched at the touch of the cold hand, but didn’t protest. After a while Itachi’s hand was pleasantly warm and Sasuke relaxed again against Itachi.

“It’s not a question of power,” Sasuke said suddenly, unexpectedly answering Itachi's earlier question. “It takes roughly the same amount of chakra as ordinary summoning.”

Itachi ran his hand over that broad back, trying to convey with touch all the things he couldn’t say.

“Then what is it costing you, if not chakra?”

Sasuke licked his lips, Itachi could feel the movement of his jaw against his chest.

“Me.” Sasuke’s voice was quiet, almost gentle. “My sense of self is the cost.”

Itachi froze.

“Explain.”

“When I summon a soul, I first need to pull that consciousness into this plane and into my own mind. I have to…make space for that person.” Sasuke went quiet for a moment. “Sometimes it feels as if there’s not enough space left for me anymore.”

Itachi could feel the damp exhale of Sasuke’s breath against the cloth of his shirt. After a moment he resumed the movement of his hand over Sasuke’s back, trying to ease the tension he could now feel there.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” Sasuke said quickly and then, “Yes.” He fell quiet then, but his breathing was definitely faster than before. It hurt to see Sasuke, so strong and always so sure, this confused. “I don’t like the way it… leaves part of them with me. It’s easier when they want to come though. Easier still when don’t actively want to hurt me.”

It then made a terrible amount of sense to itachi. Sasuke probably summoned Orochimaru first, having questions only the Snake Sannin could answer. Then, wiser but more than a little traumatised after being in such intimate contact with the madman, he reacted like a scared child and summoned his mother in an instinctual bid to gain comfort, only to be confronted with the mutilation which Itachi had had no idea about.

“There’s a mountain half a day’s walk east from here,” Itachi said quietly, looking up into the tree branches, trying to spot the shapes of the crows waiting there.

With a loud caw, one of them flew down. It circled them once and then landed on the ground beside Itachi’s shoulder. Sasuke raised his head to look at the bird which ruffled its feathers to make itself look bigger.

“The rocks are a natural wonder. They repel chakra.” Itachi smiled as the crow hopped in a little circle, still puffed up and obviously irritated at not being properly admired. “You should climb up to the top.”

“Why?” Sasuke asked laying his head on Itachi’s chest again.

Itachi smiled into the mess of black hair tickling his nose.

“I think you’ll find something you like up there.”

Sasuke was quiet for a long time, long enough that Itachi started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.

“Okay,” his younger brother murmured quietly before falling asleep for real.

Itachi knew that the ease with which Sasuke fell asleep next to him was probably only due to the seal binding Itachi to him, but seeing the loose, relaxed sprawl of Sasuke’s body, hearing the gentle and even breathing… Itachi would agree to a thousand seals to have this anyway.

*

Sasuke jumped down from the Garuda, the large Hawk that had offered to give him a lift back to the camp. His hand trailed along the surprisingly smooth feathers on his way down. It was shocking just how fragile the body felt under all those feathers, and yet the Hawks managed to look majestic and remote.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and couldn’t quite stop himself from petting a wicked beak that lowered to his face in response.

He could feel each of the Hawks in the clan that had signed the summoning contract with him, his hand still sporting the cut used to draw blood for the signing. At first he expected them to feel like the snakes, gallivanting cheerfully though his mind, but this was so very different. There was a sense of presence, a bright spark of calm strength and resolve for each of the Hawks, but no other connection. They didn’t share his thoughts or emotions the way the snakes did, weren’t part of his very being, but already he felt incredibly protective of the creatures. There was something mesmerising in their calmness, their sense of purpose. 

Their leader took one look at him and spread his wings to their full spread, blocking the sky from Sasuke’s view completely. His eyes were dark and pinned Sasuke in the spot. He found himself measured and judged in a space of a heartbeat. He was taken aback by the odd warmth in his chest at being so easily accepted for what he was, with chakra which made most people uncomfortable with him. Everybody wanted him to talk about his feelings, to _care_ about things he barely understood, much less paid attention to. No one ever listened when he told them he had only one goal in life, to avenge the Uchiha clan. They all had their little problems, their insignificant ideals they wanted Sasuke to care about too, completely ignoring that it took all his focus and willpower to simply wake up in the mornings.

The Hawk took one look at him, at his dirty clothing, dirty and torn from the grueling climb, his fingers bleeding from the sharp rocks, and the hair plastered to his head with sweat. His eyes burned sharingan red out of sheer frustration, chest heaving from the pure physical exertion, and _accepted_ Sasuke as he was.

“ _You_ , I _will_ sign a contract with.”

In that moment an inexplicable fondness was born in Sasuke, for the birds and the gift of easy undemanding acceptance, of validation that he _meant_ something.

After the blood was shed by both parties and the contract signed, one of the bigger Hawks offered to carry him back to his camp, claiming that it was time Sasuke was taught how to _fly_.

Warned by the sly tone of Garuda’s voice, Sasuke channelled chakra to his feet as soon as he climbed the bird. That had been the only reason he hadn’t fallen off when Garuda launched himself into the air as if a thousand devils had been on his tail. He went from placidly standing to flying through the air with enough speed to steal the air from Sasuke’s lungs. With every beat of the birds wings, they were gaining even more speed. His hair was flying around wildly, and the air was hitting his skin with enough power that he had to channel chakra to all of his exposed skin to avoid windburn.

With a final strong flap of his wings, Garuda had them gliding through the air at an altitude that made the landscape beneath them look like a collection of child’s toys. They were so high Sasuke couldn’t judge their speed by the moving landscape because it looked almost lazy, the tiny trees and even smaller huts of the little village not far away from the mountain.

“Ready?” asked the bird, as if the violent take off hadn’t been warning enough.

Paranoid, Sasuke went down on his knees, not quite trusting that chakra alone would keep him steady. Suddenly there was a feeling of weightlessness, everything almost stilling before they plunged down at a speed that had Sasuke _screaming_.

The whole world whirled around them as Garuda not only dived down like mad, tucking his wings tightly in and stretching his body, but also corkscrewing, making Sasuke dizzy with the speed, the sheer exhilaration of the fall. It was faster than anything he’d ever experienced, wild and free, and before he realized what he was doing, he had his fingers curled in the soft feathers and was screaming his head off at the sheer joy of the mad acrobatics.

Now, watching as the Hawk, his Hawk, launched into the air with the same violent glee as before, Sasuke was both exhausted and oddly relaxed. 

Probably all that screaming.

Vaguely he knew he should feel ashamed of his lack of control, but somehow he couldn’t muster the resolve.

“You can come out now Hajime,” he said gently to the snake masquerading as a tattoo on his torso.

_If I come out now I will barf out my meals from the last week. Just a warning._

“Come on, it wasn’t so bad.” Sasuke did his best to hide the mirth in his voice but it was a lost case anyway, as Hajime could feel the amusement in his mind.

_Don’t come on me! Snakes are land animals! Land! You hear me? We do not enjoy flying in any way, shape or form! Land!_ Hajime sounded spitting mad, the picture of his shape on Sasuke’s skin tingling crazily.

He sighed with relief when Hajime separated from his skin, becoming corporeal again. He preferred the squirming body to the infernal tingling of the tattoo. 

“I had no idea you were such a cry-baby,” Sasuke murmured, keeping still for the white cobra to slither to the ground. Hajime was getting heavy.

_I will give you cr…_ Hajime became quiet suddenly. Sasuke could almost feel the sudden focus in the snake’s stillness. _I can taste fear. Somebody is afraid._

“Show me,” Sasuke said quietly, already following the cobra.

Hajime was fast, forcing Sasuke to run after him as he cut through the dark forest and into the camp. Without hesitation, he picked his way between the tents, his head raised slightly, and his tongue darting out to taste the air every few seconds.

They ghosted through the camp, disturbing no one. Hajime turned sharply left, a white scar on the dark background of the packed earth, and speared through the nearest tent flap, disappearing inside.

Sasuke put his right hand on the hilt of his sword, loosening the catch gently as not to make a sound, and readied his chakra without actually raising it. His eyes bled to red as he pushed the tent flap open and rushed inside ready to _maim_ whoever dared to encroach on his territory and cause _fear_ to those under his protection.

In the split second he needed to rush inside, his sharingan already catalogued everything in the small room. The bags and clothes on the left, Hajime with his hood fully spread and head waist high, baring his fangs but looking oddly confused, and the form huddled on the bedding on the right of him. It physically hurt to stop, his muscles straining to halt the movement of his attack.

“Sasuke-sama?” came a shaky, croaky voice.

Minako.

The second woman who’d been confirmed pregnant. She was quiet and calm, had an innate dignity to her Sasuke found very charming.

As he stared at her, his sharingan still blazing; he smelled the scent of her tears and could see the redness around her eyes.

“Minako-san?” he asked, lost for words.

The woman wiped furiously at her cheeks, trying to put on a smile for him, but it looked so forced as to be painful.

“What happened?” he snapped, masking his confusion with terseness.

She flinched from his sharp tone and Hajime hissed at him, obviously appalled. Sasuke fought the urge to hiss back. Hajime was obviously all for snapping at Sasuke, but it wasn’t as if the snake knew what to do either.

“Nothing. I’m all right. It was just a nightmare.” Her voice was still breaking on almost every word. 

Sasuke knew something about nightmares. Knew how it felt to fear closing his eyes more than anything else in the world. There was a reason he’d never feared what Orochimaru might do to him, what kind of injuries he might suffer during training or in a fight, why he didn’t hesitate to surrender his body and a part of his mind for Mother Queen. Nothing was worse than what he saw in his dreams, the utter terror and helplessness of living the worst day of his life over and over again, forever unable to stop it.

Hajime swayed uncertainly between them.

_Do something_ , Hajime hissed urgently.

Sasuke sheathed his sword, not taking his eyes from Minako’s pale cheeks unattractively blotched with red.

“Wait here,” he said, as if there was anywhere the woman could actually go, and ducked out of the tent.

Frantic, but unwilling to admit he had no fucking idea what to do, he got to his own tent, rushing inside fast enough to startle Itachi who was sharpening his blades.

“Sasuke.” His brother’s dark eyes flicked quickly over his body assessingly. A shadow of relief that crossed his face before that too was hidden. Even after all this time, Sasuke had no idea how to read his brother.

Itachi was obviously ready for bed, as he was dressed in a warm long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants. In reaction to Sasuke’s abrupt entrance, he was already rising, the grip on the kunai he’d been sharpening tightening. Sasuke’s sharingan already predicted the rest of the movement and informed him that Itachi was going to sheathe the knife at his hip, where there was an added fold of cloth which allowed for carrying a concealed weapon.

Sasuke dashed forward, catching his brother’s wrist, bony and hard, in his hand and pulling the knife away from him with the other. 

Itachi surrendered the weapon easily, question s in his eyes. 

“I need you,” Sasuke said, and started pulling Itachi towards the exit. “Come on.”

Itachi let himself be towed into the the freezing dark night, not once complaining that he was barefoot and the ground was dusted with snow.

“I presume it went well then?” Itachi murmured as he obligingly followed after Sasuke, his wrist limp and relaxed in his brother’s hold, the bones deceptively fragile beneath the skin.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the Hawks?” Sasuke asked, taking a sharp turn left and ducking between two closely-set tents. There was a sound of a child crying coming from the one on the left.

Itachi smiled fondly.

“I had a feeling you would get on well with them.”

Years ago, Itachi had tried to sign a contract with them. He had managed to get to the top of the mountain, but the oldest Hawk, the leader, refused the contract. It said that they were hunters, predators, and Itachi, though powerful, didn’t have the heart of a hunter.

Eventually, Sasuke made a beeline for a particular tent, barely slowing down before ducking inside, making Itachi scramble to follow.

Sasuke met the wide eyes of Minako, face still much too pale, the oddly protective way hajime positioned himself between her bedding and the entrance, at as much a loss of what to do to take that haunted look out of her eyes as Sasuke.

She was pregnant. It was important she slept well and wasn’t under too much stress. If the nightmare had been bad enough to leave the whole camp smelling of fear strong enough for Hajime to pick it up, even from outside it, then it was already way too much.

He turned back to itachi, noting that his brother’s dark eyes were already assessing Minako with a soft, understanding look.

He let go of the bony wrist and hissed quietly at Itachi:

“ _Fix it_.”

The corner of Itachi’s lips twitched, obviously amused, before Minako’s humiliated groan reached them and broke the eye contact.

This time she was covering her face with her hands.

“Gods, this is so embarrassing.”

Itachi moved past Sasuke, kneeling down beside Minako with a kind of flowing grace Sasuke could never match.

“Minako-san,” His brother said gently, taking her hands in his and pulling them away from her face. “Do you think I am dangerous?” Itachi asked seriously, his voice low but soft.

Her eyes opened widely in surprise as she stared first at Itachi, then oddly enough at Sasuke, and then back at Itachi. She lowered her eyes, hiding the expression in them, and nodded.

“We all heard that even Orochimaru-sama avoided any kind of confrontation with you,” she said quietly, her voice still rough. She must have screamed in her sleep to damage her throat so badly.

“Would you feel safer if I stayed with you tonight?” The question was calm, gentle almost, giving her all the room she needed to refuse.

Sasuke was briefly jealous. He knew he wasn’t capable of this. This empathy, this gentleness. He cared about the women, about Minako, Chiasa and Minako especially, the ones who were carrying his brother’s children already. It was easier for him to go out and get money, risk life and limb in underpaid A-rank missions that often were S-class in disguise than do what Itachi was doing right now. Offering comfort, offering understanding and careful support was so far beyond Sasuke all he could do was stare at Itachi doing it so effortlessly.

At Minako’s shy nod, Itachi wasted no time before insinuating himself into her bedding, making her squirm as his cold feet touched her.

Sasuke reached to his thigh holster and removed four kunai. He approached the pair and tucked the blades in the shadows behind the pillows, leaving Itachi weapons to defend himself with. His brother’s dark eyes followed him the whole time, wide and soft, asking for something Sasuke didn't understand or knew how to give.

So he got up and with a gruff “good night”, escaped the tent and the questions in Itachi's eyes.

 

27-01-2016


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I tried, really tried to write good action scenes but it DAMN HARD. I also tried to tie up most of the loose ends. The next fic in the series will be just a way for me to express all my smexy impulses and dump all the scenes I have already written :)
> 
> Anyway back to the story. There is a handkerchief warning and please take it seriously because I sniffled here and I WROTE the damn thing. There is also two chapters as you probably noticed because I have, as before, NOT managed to keep to the plan and kept adding scenes. Bluedemon92 told me to “go out with a bang” and that is exactly what I did. Instead of 3k epilogue I wrote two chapters amounting to over 13K words. Gah. However remember that the last chapter is DONE just waiting for beta. NurseDarry is a very good beta so when she says wait, I go to a corner and wait very, very quiety :) Last chapter will most probably be posted tommorrow evening.

Hajime sighed explosively after the tenth time Sasuke squashed him when he rolled over. Again. The hour was extremely late or rather very early now and Sasuke still wasn’t sleeping. The tent he usually shared with his brother seemed too big now, uncomfortable and uninviting to him. Without Itachi there to curl around, Sasuke couldn’t relax enough to sleep, his mind a hive of different, each more disturbing or upsetting, thoughts than before.

_Go sleep with Itachi before you squash me flat completely_ , Hajime huffed squirming out from under Sasuke. Again.

“He is with Minako now,” Sasuke answered sullenly. Logically, he knew she needed the closeness, the comfort.

The snake snorted, the sound shivering oddly in Sasuke’s mind.

_You were there when they were having sex and she didn’t protest. You think she will mind sharing a tent with you both for a night?_

Sasuke stared at the tent wall for a while, carefully avoiding Hajime’s gaze. There was some…truth to what Hajime was saying.

After another twenty minutes of tossing and turning, Sasuke finally admitted that he was going to do what Hajime suggested, and what he’d wanted from the start. He gathered the bedding in his arms and left his tent.

_Trouble?_ came a quiet question from Sia, one of the three rattlers that guarded the kids, as he sensed Sasuke moving through the camp.

_No_. Sasuke answered shortly, unwilling to admit his weakness aloud.

He entered Minako’s tent as quietly as he knew how, with barely a whisper of cloth. It made no difference as Itachi’s eyes were already open, dark and soft, watching him with that calm expression Sasuke couldn’t read at all.

Sasuke hesitated but then squared his shoulders, unwilling to appear weak. He started laying down the bedding on Itachi’s other side, careful not to wake Minako who was sleeping with her face pressed to Itachi’s shoulder, her breathing even and calm.

“What?” He mouthed at his brother when he saw the quirk of his lips.

“It seems I owe Mianko money now,” Itachi answered equally quietly.

Sasuke flushed, but slid into the newly-prepared bedding and pressed his face into Itachi’s neck almost aggressively, enjoying the flinch when his cold nose pressed into the soft skin there.

*

The attack happened an hour before dawn. It was Karin who sensed the approaching chakra signatures and burst into the tent Sasuke was sharing with Minako and Itachi. She watched with open curiosity when Sasuke and Itachi scrambled out of bed, her eyes roaming shamelessly. Sasuke only rolled his eyes at her, glad she wasn’t trying to grope him any longer.

_Most_ of the time anyway.

Itachi, Sasuke, Kisame, and Suigetsu made their way down the mountain where the approaching signatures were getting clearer with every second. There were two dozen of them; most seemed like chuunin and jounin level. They were spread out a fair bit, and as soon as Sasuke flared his chakra, he could feel them pulling back and away.

The goal was to keep them away from the camp so Sasuke decided to pursue, even though Itachi was oddly hesitant. It was bad enough that somebody knew their camp’s location.

It wasn’t difficult, catching up to the rapidly fleeing mercenaries and hunting them down one by one. Their skill level was drastically lower than of Sasuke or anybody from his team. Whoever had sent them must have been out of his mind. It was nothing short of a bloodbath, and Sasuke was feeling oddly disconcerted as he stared at another masked ninja bleeding out on the forest floor.

Casting his senses for another enemy, he realised his brother was pacing him quite closely. In the distance, he could feel Suigetsu and Kisame flaring their chakra from time to time, obviously having a good time hunting down the attackers.

Haunted by the strange sensation, Sasuke went in search of his brother. He found him east of his own location, standing over a dead ninja with a blank expression, a short sword dripping blood held loosely in one hand.

“‘Something isn’t right,” Sasuke said, landing next to his brother.

Itachi’s red eyes scanned the surroundings before turning to Sasuke.

“There is a pattern to the way they scattered. As if they wanted us separated, and as far away from the camp as possible.”

Sasuke tightened his jaw, thinking it through.

“We can’t let them get away.”

It was a fact. They needed to catch every single one of the attackers, to send a message to the one who had send them. At the same time, if what Itachi said proved to be true, it would mean somebody knew way too much about the camp. It was good Juugo and Karin had stayed behind, but now Sasuke was wondering if they’d been enough.

One of Itachi’s birds cawed from overhead, circling them, a black spot against a graphite sky.

“The crows found another one,” Itachi said. With a sharp flick of his wrist he cleaned the blood from his sword and sheathed it at his back, the hilt sticking out over his shoulder. Sasuke’s own sword was sheathed at the small of his back, threaded through the rope holding the wrap on his hips. They both wore dark cloaks, the better to hide them in the darkness of the forest.

Itachi jumped on the nearest tree branch and started following the bird that only he could sense. Sasuke followed half a beat behind, still somewhat irked that he couldn’t quite match Itachi’s speed, even in something as simple as tree running.

They didn’t bother being quiet, closing in on the man with as much speed as they could garner, and them being Uchiha, meant _a lot_ of speed.

Sasuke attacked first, sensing his brother jumping to a higher branch, obviously taking the supporting position. That was all right because Sasuke had some questions to ask the man anyway.

He dropped down from the branch, intending on kneecapping the missing nin in the same move. This man was obviously better trained than those before him because he managed to avoid Sasuke’s kick and lashed out with his own kunai, forcing the Uchiha to jump back and keep his distance.

The pointed teeth and small eyes indicated that the man was a Kiri-missing nin and those were never easy opponents. He was tall, big-built, with very short cropped hair, and sensible clothes without any distinguishing design. The way he followed Sasuke’s movements with his eyes, keeping his body ready but relaxed spoke of experience and skill. This was not just cannon fodder like those Sasuke had hunted down before.

As he lunged at Sasuke, the younger Uchiha already had his hands flashing through the seals for Chidori Nagashi, his eyes informing him it was a clone before him.

He rolled aside, ready to trap the man where he was hidden in the ground. Just before he released his lightning attack, something terrible wrenched inside him. Where a warm, familiar presence used to be, was suddenly a terrifying emptiness and a sense of panic coming through from the snakes he’d left in the camp.

Instead of landing in a crouch as he planned, he slipped and slammed gracelessly into the ground, breathless and stunned, choking on something he couldn’t name.

Out of the loose sleeve of his shirt, Hajime burst out, wrapping himself around the attacking clone, his fangs breaking the skin and destroying the clone with his venom. At the same time, a dozen superheated fireballs bombarded the forest floor around him, destroying a good part of the clearing and judging by the short cut-off shout, killing the ninja hiding in the ground, too.

“Sasuke!” Itachi was beside him suddenly, thin but strong hands pulling him upright and brushing debris away from his face. “What happened? You were doing fine and then...”

“The camp.” Sasuke managed to gasp out, his stomach rolling dangerously, every time he touched on that emptiness inside his mind. He grasped Itachi’s clothes and pulled him closer, making sure to catch his brother’s eyes to _show_ him how urgent it was. _“Go!”_ He hissed, feeling stomach acid already in his throat. _“Now.”_

Itachi didn’t ask. His eyes swirled into Mangekyou form before he disappeared like smoke, leaving no trace behind even as Sasuke rolled to the side and threw up the bile he’d been fighting before.

*

Itachi landed in the clearing he’d built a bridge to that first time he activated his evolved eyes, his chakra levels barely affected by the trip. He was making seals even as he ran.

When he burst into the camp grounds he saw the bodies first. Dressed in black, with no village markings but with deformities that marked them as Orochimaru’s experiments. He passed three bodies clustered together, the blunt force trauma marking them as Juugo’s kills.

Half of the tents were burning, strangers still milling, searching through the tents still standing. Further down, on his left Itachi could hear fighting, enraged sounds Juugo was making as he tossed opponents left and right.

Itachi was running so fast he cut the first opponent’s carotid artery without stopping at all, exhaling fire into the face of another, and whirling on the third. The man only had time to widen his eyes before Itachi cut him open from hip to shoulder.

Juugo looked up from the man he was pummeling into ground, finding the ring of opponents thinned out, and Itachi in front of him. The man’s whole arm had changed, traces of madness around the eyes but he was still in control. His chakra wild and lashing, but in control.

Itachi understood. In the middle of the camp, with so many civilians around, he couldn’t let his curse take over. It was an incredible feat of strength, to stay in control when there were so many opponents taking potshots at him, as evidenced by the multiple wounds all over the big man’s body.

Itachi prepared to fight with him, eye already clocking onto the next opponent when Juugo spoke, his voice oddly raspy.

“No!” The redhead shook his head. “They took…” His voice broke and Itachi noticed the green powder staining the felt side of the man’s face. Probably poison. “Aiko-san. They took her before Karin managed to evacuate the camp. I stayed to stall them, but somebody has to go after Aiko-san before we lose the trail!”

“Where?”

Juugo raised one bleeding arm to point at a small bird circling over them.

“Follow him.”

Itachi nodded and jumped away from the closing in enemies, to run full tilt after the bird, calling his crows at the same time.

Behind him, he could feel the dark aura of Juugo’s curse spreading rapidly as the man no longer had to remain human now that he’d passed his message on. There was a roar, wicked glee and a scream of terror. Juugo would take care of the ones still in camp.

With his speed, it wasn’t even a challenge to catch up to the three-man-cell carrying Aiko wrapped up in a blanket. She was bouncing on the biggest man’s shoulders, head down and auburn hair flying everywhere. His enhanced eyesight let him catch the bruises and scrapes on her skin, where somebody must have pressed her face into the ground with quite some force. There was also an expression of pain on her face that indicated some kind of injury.

He had his garrote wire around the rear guard’s neck before anybody even noticed him, and the second man in genjutsu almost in the same moment.

“Kouki what are you-” the one carrying Aiko exclaimed as his companion lunged at him. Itachi grabbed Aiko’s shoulders and pulled her away as the two companions started fighting. As soon as he had her away from the range of the fight, Itachi unsheathed his sword, encased it in superheated air and decapitated the one under his genjutsu. The heat succesfully cauterised the wound reducing blood spillage to a minimum. As the one beneath struggled to get free from his now-dead companion’s body, Itachi reversed his swing, enhancing it with chakra, and cut right through both of the living man’s legs at the knee.

The man screamed, but at least he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Who sent you.”

The man’s wide eyes locked on Itachi’s sharingan. He could read the defiance in his gaze, the fierce loyalty of those truly fanatic. But that was all right, Itachi knew how to burn that devotion right out of him.

“Tsukuyomi.”

*

Itachi came back to the camp exhausted. Aiko had no life-threatening injuries, only heavy bruising on her face and an injury to her hip. It probably dislocated when she fought her attackers as they were ripping her clothes away to verify that she was pregnant. It was obvious that it was the unborn children who were the target. The fact that the attackers had minimal medical training resulted in them being exceedingly brutal while verifying if Aiko was a viable target. The woman was remarkably composed, not looking at the mutilated bodies Itachi had left behind, and cooperating as best as she could when Itachi tried to figure out how to take her back to the camp.

She couldn’t walk though, and with her hip in the state it was, there was no position he could carry her without causing her undue pain. Eventually he put her under a soft illusion and teleported them both back to the clearing. Now he knew he could carry at least one person with him through teleportation using a built bridge. The bad news were that it drained his chakra at a frighteningly fast level.

He left Aiko near Juugo, the boy slowly bandaging his wounds with a serious expression on his face. He immediately stood to accept the sleeping Aiko from Itachi’s arms.

“You should go to him.” Juugo said, carefully laying Aiko down and pointing deeper into the camp.

When Itachi rounded the wreckage of a cluster of burned-out tents, he saw Sasuke kneeling down in the sooty ground, a small brown and bloody body on his knees. Beside him he could see Kanaye and Nao curled over another brown body, both snakes glowing fiercely green, healing the gash running through the snake’s head and eye. Beside them was the last of the rattlers, Fuu with a few sluggishly-bleeding gashes, watching as Yuu was being healed.

The last of the triplets, Sia, was in Sasuke’s lap. There was a huge, gaping hole in the snake’s body, running clear through. The snake was limp, eyes open, lying dead even as Sasuke ran his fingers over the small body.

His brother’s face was still and pale, eyes fixed on the dead summon in his lap, stroking it almost meditatively.

“Aiko’s safe.”

Sasuke didn’t react beyond nodding, eyes still fixed on Sia’s body.

_Yuuta and Nobu are hiding with Karin and the rest of the women and children_ , came Fuu’s subdued voice. _They’ll lead her back soon enough._

“And Yuu?” Itachi asked gently, kneeling down beside Sasuke. This time it was Kanaye who answered.

_The eye we couldn’t save, but he will live._

Fuu slumped down, obviously relieved at the news.

_Hajime is the strongest. When he comes back, he will take Sia home._ Fuu said quietly, slithering closer to Itachi. The older Uchiha ran the tips of his fingers delicately over whatever uninjured flesh he could find on the hurt rattler.

They waited in silence, Itachi’s shoulder pressed to Sasuke’s shoulder for Hajime to come back from wherever he was. Sasuke never said a word, never made a sound, simply knelt on the cold ground and ran his hand over Sia’s body.

When Hajime came out of the darkness, Mirai was with him. The two snakes approached Sasuke carefully, their heads almost touching Sia’s body as they tasted the air around their brother. Eventually Hajime raised himself high, his hood open and the faint golden markings on his back glowing brightly. Seconds later a glowing array formed itself under him, symbols writing themselves in glowing shapes. It spanned the place where Kanaye and Nao were healing Yuu and stopped just inches from Sasuke’s knees.

His younger brother didn’t react, eyes still focused on the dead snake he was petting. Eventually Itachi stopped his brother’s hands, forcing them carefully aside. Next he gently gathered the still body and took it from Sasuke’s knees.

That was the first moment his brother made a sound. A tiny, choked protest that never was truly voiced, swallowed down in the middle. It was possibly the saddest sound Itachi had ever heard, and it broke what was left of his heart. It sounded as if Sasuke couldn’t even express how much he hurt. What was worse was how quickly he swallowed that sound, so used to living with unbearable pain, he no longer even sought comfort from it.

Itachi gently and carefully placed Sia’s body in the glowing array, allowing himself one last touch. Out of all of Sasuke’s snakes he was closest with Mirai and the triplets. He would miss Sia, as he had still been a friend, and Itachi didn’t have an abundance of those.

Without a sound, the array disappeared, and with it all of the snakes present.

Sasuke didn’t even blink, just stayed staring at his lap and his blood-streaked hands. He wasn’t crying or raging. He looked like he was barely breathing.

Shifting closer, Itachi slid his hand under the stiff bristle of his brother’s hair and closed his palm over Sasuke’s nape, reassuring himself in the steady beat of a pulse he could feel under his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, pulling Sasuke close enough to hug, close enough for his brother to bury his cold nose under Itachi’s jaw. Sasuke went easily, pliant in a way that frankly disturbed Itachi.

Sasuke shuddered once and then stilled, both hands lying limply in his lap.

“I felt him die.”

Itachi closed his eyes.

That was what stunned Sasuke so badly during his fight with the mercenary, so badly he almost got killed by someone much weaker than himself.

Up till now, Itachi was grateful for the close bond Sasuke had with his snakes. It served him well, making him interact with beings that loved him unconditionally, without any preconceptions or expectations. Now however, Itachi couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like for Sasuke, already so used to pain and psychological suffering, to feel Sia die.

“I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” Itachi murmured, running his hand through his brother’s hair. “If there’s anything I can do to help, tell me.”

After long minutes of total silence, Sasuke made a sound suddenly.

“Put me under genjutsu.” Sasuke sounded oddly tired, exhausted even. “Just for a night.” He sighed, his breath tickling under Itachi’s ear. “Let me sleep without dreams for a single night.”

When he titled Sasuke’s head back to look into his eyes, his brother’s Sharingan was already spinning counter-clockwise, opening up all defenses. As exhausted as he was, Itachi activated his Mangekyou, spinning the gentlest of illusions for his brother. As Sasuke’s eyes closed, Itachi kissed the closed lids and lay his brother down to sleep.

*

Sasuke woke once during the night, his body jerking him out of the vague dreams as suddenly as if somebody had hit him. The only reason he didn’t lash out immediately was because he could feel the already-familiar presence beside him. In the darkness of the night, deep inside his mind, Sasuke sometimes admitted that there was something comforting in the way he was aware of Itachi in that place in his mind connected with the seal, long before his physical senses caught up.

He shifted blindly towards the familiar presence, his nose bumping into a warm smooth neck, inhaling the scent he was just learning to associate with safety. He could sense it was night still, his internal clock still firmly set to night.

“Itachi,” he murmured, face firmly pressed into his brother’s neck, lips dragging slowly over skin.

Sasuke liked this, the physical closeness, such a good contrast from his childhood years where Itachi had just been a spectre of hatred.

He could feel Itachi shifting closer, one of his brother’s hands curling over the curve of Sasuke’s skull and tilting his head back.

“Look at me.” Itachi’s voice was sleep rough and quiet. they were so close Sasuke could feel the vibration of Itachi’s words though the chest pressed close to his.

He opened his eyes, black and defenseless, and let himself be pulled back into the soft, vague nothingness again.

For a second time Sasuke woke up alone, to the sound of the camp rebuilding. He could hear the murmur of women talking, even Kisame arguing with what sounded like Mito, of all people. Mito was usually a very quiet and very sweet person, but something about Kisame must have rubbed her the wrong way, for whenever she saw the Kiri nin, she would always find something to argue with him about. Personally, Sasuke found it hilarious, mostly because Mito was maybe half Kisame’s size. It looked ridiculous when she was trying to glare Kisame down in a huff, but had to tilt her head quite far to do so.

Sasuke stretched, feeling more rested than usual and closed his eyes to take stock of his body. More out of habit than any conscious decision, he pulled at the place in his mind he was connected with his summons. It was a bit like tugging at a string connecting him to every one of his snakes. They responded in turn; some belligerently, like Kanaye and Nao; some eagerly like Hajime and Fuu, Yuu… But not Sia. The lack of response, that aching emptiness where a warm presence should be was like a cruel wake-up call.

He could still feel it, that instance of panic and that flash where one bright life was extinguished so easily, taking part of his soul with it.

He locked that coldness, that suffering back where the rest of the pain he’d experienced lived, let it join that black and howling mass of suffering that was his everyday reality and got up. He hadn’t died from the pain yet; he doubted this new atrocity would break him. Sometimes, at night, he wondered if there even _was_ enough of him to break any more.

Outside the tent there was a kind of controlled chaos taking place. There were women carrying clothes and other belongings, obviously rescuing them from the burned-out tents. Then there were the men of the camp carrying out the debris. Itachi and Kisame worked side by side, both shirtless, and were pulling out scorched support pegs from the ground.

Kisame looked fairly fresh; his big frame filled with bulging muscles was designed for this kind of physical work. Itachi was a surprise. Pale skin stretched over tight sculpted muscles that he rebuilt during the last weeks and illicit training. His hair was gathered up into a hilarious-looking bun, long tendrils escaping it and spilling down his face where they stuck to his skin with sweat.

As Sasuke watched, Itachi heaved another pole out of the ground and threw it into the pile of debris Juugo was steadily carrying away from the campground. Itachi was breathing hard, and when he used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his forehead, he left a trail of soot behind.

Without his shirt and with his skin flushed from all the physical labor and dirty from handling all the burned out cloth and wood, he looked healthy and powerful. Nowhere near how Kisame looked, his body chiseled for power; Itachi was sleek, tightly muscled, but those muscles became visible only when tense. When he stood relaxed, his chest, although nicely shaped with firm pectorals and a hard stomach, didn’t betray how powerful he was in reality. Sasuke’s body was a lot like that too, his muscles weren’t built up in size but in density.

Sasuke watched Itachi smile at a pair of kids racing past, each with a snake on his neck and Fuu, the most playful of the three siblings, chasing the kids with his rattle high in the air and fangs bared. There was no violent intent coming from the snake, so Sasuke assumed it was some kind of game being played. The three rattler siblings turned out to be exceptional babysitters, willing to play until they dropped. It wasn’t an unusual sight for the worn-out kids and equally worn-out snakes to just drop down for a nap in a big puppy pile somewhere. Now, of the three siblings, only Fuu was in the camp, his body healed from the wounds he’d suffered during battle now only faint scars here and there, marring his brown scales. Yuu was still gone, but thankfully alive and responding to Sasuke’s mental nudges. 

There were two new snakes, ones Sasuke had felt for a while, but who were too young or too untrained still to come to this plane of existence. Vaguely, he could remember feeling them come during the night, the place in his mind devoted to his snakes flaring with new awareness. He knew their names and general abilities even though he never met them.

He wondered if the new snakes would like playing with the kids as much as Sia had. He wondered how Yuu would fare, and how bad the extent of the damage was that he had suffered while protecting Sasuke’s new family.

Looking back at Itachi, Sasuke noticed how stunningly different he appeared with his body half-bared, dirty from hard physical labor, and the aura of _danger_ that Sasuke associated so heavily with his brother gone. So much _softer_. So much _younger_. Maybe even _happy_ , and Sasuke realized that he’d _never_ actually seen his brother with that look on his face before.

There was a giggle to his left and Sasuke really wasn’t surprised to see four of the women, Hana, Chiasa, Ran, and Yumi shamelessly ogle both Itachi and Kisame, whispering to each other. They were flushed and very obviously pleased with what they saw. His oblivious brother was providing quite a show, it seemed.

Sasuke watched as Itachi spread his legs, took hold of another pole and started pulling it out of the ground, muscles of his back bunching quite attractively, more sweat rolling down the nape of his neck.

With a smirk, Sasuke went to help his brother, secure in the knowledge that there was somebody to take the heat off now when it came to the women’s ogling.

Later, when they were sitting on a fallen log, both sweaty and dirty, eating a modest breakfast of bread and cheese, Sasuke finally asked the question that had kept bothering him.

“Did you manage to learn who was behind the attack?”

Itachi looked sideways at him before answering:

“Kabuto.”

Sasuke chewed the bit of bread he had in his mouth and swallowed it.

“So we are officially out of time now.”

Itachi nodded.

“We need to move the camp. Kill Danzo and find a village that will accept us, as fast as possible.”

Sasuke raised his eyes, surprised at the vehemence in Itachi’s voice.

“Kill? Weren’t you against killing him?”

Itachi put the bread down.

“We don’t have the luxury of leaving enemies alive any longer.” Itachi’s voice became even and emotionless. “The men were sent to kidnap one of the pregnant women, preferably all of them. There were no medic nin’s in that group though. Do you know what they did to verify if their target was pregnant? They hit Aiko in the face hard enough to cause a mild concussion. Then they ground her face into the dirt as they tore her clothes off to get to the naked skin of her belly. Next they forced unmolded chakra into her womb to check for a reaction.” Itachi looked straight ahead, his face completely blank and his eyes black, but something in his aura suggested he was incredibly angry. “Do you know what reaction they were looking for?” Itachi asked evenly. Sasuke shook his head but already suspected something bad; Aiko was a civilian. She couldn’t mold chakra and that meant she would get incredibly sick from non-purified chakra in her system.

“Convulsions. That is how pregnant women react to foreign chakra in their system, especially in their wombs. Provided they didn’t immediately terminate the pregnancy due to the trauma, that is.”

Itachi looked at Sasuke, his eyes now blood red and spinning rapidly.

“Aiko fought. She fought hard enough they had to dislocate her hip to keep her under control.” Itachi exhaled, letting his eyes turn black again. “Nao is trying to heal her injuries but is afraid of introducing too much new chakra after her trauma, so it’s going incredibly slowly.”

“We will do what’s necessary to protect them. Nobody is going to hurt our family again.” It wasn’t just a platitude. He did understand now that the status quo could no longer carry on.

Itachi closed his eyes.

“We’d better. It’s terrifying, what I would do for those women already carrying my children.”

Itachi’s love was a terrible thing, Sasuke knew, and pitied Kabuto, for he gained a pitiless enemy due to the incompetence of the people he’d hired.

*

Sasuke rapped his knuckles on the tent’s support pole and ducked inside. Aiko was resting inside the small tent in a nest of blankets. The moment she caught sight of him, she smiled.

“Visitors!” she exclaimed happily. “Good, because I was so bored!”

There were bruises on her face, large purple-red swatches now edging into black that stretched from her jaw over the scabbed scratches and gravel marks on her cheekbones to a swollen eyebrow ridge.

“I came to see how are you,” Sasuke said coming closer and kneeling down beside her bedding.

Aiko shrugged, her dark eyes clear as she looked at him.

“I’m okay. It wasn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I won’t break from it. Promise.” She quirked a one-sided smile at him.

Sasuke looked at her, resting because the snakes couldn’t quite risk healing her. It turned out, to his frustration, that it was much easier for the snakes to heal ninja because they were capable of molding chakra. It was easier still to heal Sasuke, as the snakes were more naturally inclined to yin-oriented chakra. That was mostly the problem with healing Itachi. Too much yin.

Aiko, although of Uchiha blood and carrying tremendous potential, was still a civilian in the terms of chakra ability. It meant that the snakes couldn’t freely use chakra to heal the injuries instantly as they did with ninja. Ninja’s body were capable of processing chakra, of using increased amounts of it to enhance muscles, augment bones and joints, organs, molding it. Therefore, when they received a dose of purified chakra from a med-nin or a healer animal, they knew what to do with it. Civilians’ bodies not only didn’t know how to use the foreign chakra to enhance the healing speed, they became actively sick when foreign chakra reached their system. Even purified chakra was still a risk because, while it didn’t cause immediate harm, it tended to spread though the civilian's body rather than concentrate on the injured areas. Furthemore, even if the chakra gathered where it was needed, it wasn’t processed properly. Less than five percent of chakra was assimilated, and the rest would very probably cause problems somewhere else in the organism.

A dislocated hip, mild concussion, bruises, and the injuries from the gravel that was embedded under Aiko’s skin would take days, if not weeks to heal, while for a ninja it would be a matter of minutes.

A lot of ninja Sasuke met while under Orochimaru’s mentorship thought that civilians were useless and weak because of it. Sasuke knew better.

Nobody seemed to notice that it was the civilians who lived to eighty or longer. Most ninja died before they hit forty and not only in accidents or via an enemy. They used their bodies so extensively, forced such high metabolism upon it, being such simply shortened their lifespan. Tsunade, Jiraya, or Sarutobi were simply exceptions.

There was also one other thing that Orochimaru kept ranting about greatly. Fertility. Civilian families often had four or five children without incident, while strictly ninja pairings often struggled to bear fruit. Orochimaru’s theory was that kunoichi were too heavily trained, had too little fat in their body to support the early stages of pregnancy, and that chakra used adversely affected fertility in women. If Kunoichi retired early after only a few years without any significant chakra use, they had a fair chance of conceiving. Civilian women didn’t have that kind of a problem. Their fertility was dictated by their genetics and nothing more. That was why most ninja clans with kekkei-genkai were liable to urge their sons to find wives among the civilian population of a village or even outside it.

It was no coincidence Orochimaru never allowed any kind of chakra training to his ‘specimens’. This way the women carried potential for chakra but couldn’t use it themselves. He also suspected that something was done to force them to become extremely fertile very early in their lives. According to the files he’d found at the base from where he’d freed the women, Chiasa was the oldest of them, and she was barely twenty-six. The files indicated that the current generation was actually the third one to be born in the laboratory. It was glaring, to him at last, that he didn’t see anyone older than Chiasa in that lab. He didn’t miss that the two oldest children in the camp didn’t call any of the women mother either.

Now that he had time to think about it, the fate they must have suffered was horrifying. Each name was assigned a number in the files he’d found. The numbers indicated that there should have been many more people in that lab. Mito’s child, at the time not even born, was already tagged with number 137, and he only took twelve women and seven children from that place.

Aiko, all the women really, were so different to him. Largely cheerful, happy to start a new life, to build a family with him. Not as an effect of sudden and fierce love which Sasuke would never fully trust, but as a conscious decision that would last for much longer than any infatuation. It humbled him, how open they were to the future. How willing to try something new, to start their life anew. It was something Sasuke had never known how to do. His every waking moment was filled with high-definition memories of blood spilled, of bodies of his whole family everywhere. Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was that night his whole world shattered. Unlike Aiko, he’d never moved past that.

Looking at her, bruised and battered but somehow still victorious, still unbowed and so gloriously alive, Sasuke realized that for all his power, he was inherently weaker than Aiko. In that moment, with all the bruises and the drab clothing, hair bound in a simple ponytail she was _beautiful_. The fact that she was already carrying Itachi’s child, the fact that she was _his_ only, made her _more_ beautiful, more attractive in his eyes.

Sasuke remembered that time when he’d just turned fifteen and Orochimaru had sent a girl to his room as a present. She was truly spectacular, even he could admit that. Long auburn hair, tiny waist he could circle with his hands, lush hips and more than generous breasts. She smelled like wild flowers and winter air, dressed in the finest silks, her eyes were the deepest shade of green he’d ever seen and she moved with a grace that most ninja weren’t capable of. She had been just a few years older than him and most men in the base couldn’t stop talking about just glimpsing her for weeks afterwards. Sasuke did what was expected of him. Having sex was a pleasant thing, orgasm made a lot of things better, but he could have as well done without. When he thought back to the experience, he could admit assessing the girl and categorizing her as beautiful, but did nothing more for him. It didn't matter to him whether she was stunning or completely ordinary, it merely made the sex a little more engaging than masturbation, which wasn’t especially attractive to him anyway.

Aiko, with her soft body being slightly rounder than considered proper, with her bruised face and gravel scratches which would probably leave scars for years to come, with her long dark auburn hair that had never felt the touch of a stylist, and in drab clothes looked more desirable than any woman had ever done before.

And she was _his_.

Without thinking about it any further, Sasuke leaned down and kissed her. She made a surprised noise as he slanted his lips over hers. It wasn’t a chaste or delicate kiss. The fact he even experienced desire towards a woman was a surprising enough fact. He was a little rough with the kiss, not fond of surprises as he was.

Aiko was exceptionally good with changes in her life it seemed, taking everything in her stride. She caught up fast, opening her mouth under his and sucking his tongue inside, brave and a little lewd, very sure of what she wanted.

Sasuke shifted to lie beside her, stretching his body along hers, pleased to feel her alive and warm against him. He touched her, sliding his hand under the blankets and loose clothes to touch naked skin. Aiko made a wordless protest at the first touch of his cold hand, her belly flinching under his palm.

Sasuke spread his fingers, roaming the warm skin as he kissed Aiko, long and slow and as wet as she wanted. His lips were already getting swollen, he could feel the tingling, and cursed his pale skin. It was always so easy to see the evidence of sex on his body. Aiko was smiling into the kiss, the smile turning slowly but surely into a grin.

“It’s only been a few weeks,” she said into the kiss, her hand curling firmly into his clothes, pulling him close, making him sprawl half-over her, always conscious of the injured hip. “You are not going to find a baby bump there yet,” she added with a snort, stretching to bite at his chin, his jaw and then fearlessly closing her teeth on his neck and sucking. There was going to be a hell of a mark there, later. “You might find something if you go a bit further down, though,” she offered doing some more damage to his neck.

Sasuke couldn’t help himself, he snorted at the heavy-handed hint and pulled her back into a kiss, before she said more. In the back of his mind he thought about her with her belly heavy with child, which made something very hot, very possessive twist in his chest and settle, just behind his ribs.

Sasuke shifted his hand from her belly, sadly admitting that yes, she was right, no matter how much he searched there was no bump to be found. He moved careful fingers to her hip, trying to assess the damage himself when there was a sudden hiss and sharp pain in his hand.

_Excuse me! I am trying to work here! What the hell were you thinking?! Who the hell do you think I am?_ Nao was so enraged he kept projecting his voice to everyone judging by the way Aiko’s eyes were widening with every word. Sasuke sucked at the bite to his hand, tasting poison and looked at the innocent fold of blankets that hid the irate snake. _No hanky-panky during healing! I refuse, do you hear me? Or, Mother be my witness, I will make you regret it!_

Sasuke looked back at Aiko, whose wide eyes had a suspicious shine to them. She had her hand firmly pressed against her lips muffling odd wheezes and snorts.

He furrowed his brows at her in silent communication, everything else drowned out by the steady litany of complaints coming from the still-hidden snake.

Aiko took her hand away from her mouth at his look and mouthed at him ‘hanky-panky’ before throwing her head back and all but _howling_ with laugher.

She laughed so hard her whole body shook, occasionally hiccuping and starting again. It was infectious, though and before long Sasuke found himself lying on his back beside her and snickering right along. Every time Aiko would almost calm down, she would choke out the words “hanky-panky” and would be off again, dragging him along. All the while, Nao kept yelling at Sasuke about his _perverted mating rituals_ , and at Aiko to _be still, you female!_

That was how Itachi found them, probably alerted by the unholy racket they were making. He smirked at them both, something very pleased in his eyes, before he lay down beside Sasuke and threw his arm over both his brother and Aiko. Probably also Nao, but as usual, Nao had nothing against Itachi, the traitor.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: It is DONE! I have finally, finally written a last chapter. Yes, really. LAST. I can hear you all laughing because I kept promising that the next chapter would be the last, since the...fourth one. The story is way over 50k words. Next time I tell my beta I am writing a short story she will probably get a hernia from laughing at me.

Chapter 10 (epilogue)

 

Sasuke was sitting in front of one of the four fires burning in the camp. It was the one furthest from the centre and he only had to share it with Hajime, the white cobra taking half the available space, who sprawled so close to the fire Sasuke was half convinced he would have a grilled snake by the end of the night instead of a summons.

The quiet footsteps behind him were light but purposeful. It wasn’t Itachi, the man was too quiet to be heard besides the connection they had through the seal, clearly indicating Itachi was very focused on something away from Sasuke. Probably more like illicit training. As long as Itachi didn’t exhaust himself, the snakes pretended not to notice him sneaking out. There might have been some bribery taking place too.

The women from the camp were quiet but not ninja-trained and the kids stomped around like a herd of elephants. Juugo was extremely quiet, but his chakra was so expansive it was easy to sense him. Suigetsu hadn’t ever heard the word stealth, much less knew its meaning.

Kisame was extremely quiet, almost as stealthy as Itach,i but his seal made him immediately visible to Sasuke. Besides, the sense of extreme glee coming from Kisame meant he was probably training with Itachi. It disturbed Sasuke how _happy_ the man was to fight with Itachi.

That only left Karin, and on some level, Sasuke expected her to come to him sooner or later. She didn’t do well with failure. None of Orochimaru’s people did, the cost usually too high.

Her right arm was heavily bandaged and the way she moved indicated some kind of injury to her midsection too. Kanaye was not back yet, of the healer snakes only Nao was back in this plane of existence, and he was busy with Aiko. It was imperative that everyone was mobile as fast as possible, and since Karin’s injuries didn’t affect her ability to move too much, she wasn’t a priority.

“Sasuke.” She sounded hesitant. “Can we talk?”

“Hn.”

She took that as an invitation and sat down beside him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t sense the other attack.” Karin sounded truly miserable. She was used to being the best sensor in the area, and this failure was sitting heavily on her shoulders, especially considering the possible consequences. Juugo was the unquestionable hero of the camp, fighting off attackers without letting the curse take over until Karin managed to get the people to safety through one of the emergency routes Itachi had insisted on planning out. “They suppressed their chakra and waited till you and the others started fighting. The kind of power you, Itachi, and Kisame can put out is too heavy to let me sense anything under it. The timing was…damn perfect.”

Sasuke shifted a bit, not looking at Karin, respecting the courage it took to apologize.

“Kabuto.”

Karin twitched beside him.

“What?”

“Itachi pulled that info out of one of the missing nin who kidnapped Aiko. He was the one who orchestrated the whole thing.”

Karin cursed softly.

“That explains why the timing was so good. Kabuto helped train me, he knows my skills and range better than anybody else.”

Sasuke only hummed. They knew now and would be prepared. Besides, the utter fiasco of this attack would put a damper on his plans. Next time he would have a harder time finding so many missing nin willing to take the obviously suicide mission because, by god Sasuke would drown the whole forest in blood before letting a single person from this camp be taken.

Karin was quiet for a very long time. Eventually she shifted closer, and then closer still, curling her arm under his.

Sasuke shrugged her off with his usual bruskness, not expecting her to sniffle at him.

“Why won’t you sleep with me?” Karin was looking at him over the rim of her glasses, her eyes focused but unreadable.

Sasuke looked at her from the corner of his eye.

“Because you don’t want me,” he said slowly turning to look at her fully. “When you look at me your pupils do not dilate. When you touch me, your pulse doesn’t change at all. Your body temperature remains the same. I don’t know why you behave the way you do, but it has nothing to do with desire.”

Karin’s eyes were wide, vulnerable, and that open look made her look beautiful for the first time since he’d known her.

She closed her eyes and exhaled loud and long. She pulled her knees to her chest and curled her arms around them tightly, pressing her forehead to her knees. She looked very small that way.

“When Orochimaru-sama was alive, I trained myself to never look that way at anybody,” she said bitterly. “I was a woman, and while my sensor abilities were unparallelled, there was too much risk Orochimaru-sama or Kabuto would turn me into a breeder for their experiments.”

She curled even tighter into herself.

“Even though it’s been awhile since his death, I don’t know how to change it.” Her voice was very quiet. “Everybody looks at you and finds you attractive. I’m a sensor. I _know_ they do.” She sounded vehement then and confused. So very confused. “Why don’t I feel the same? When I know I should?”

Personally Sasuke couldn’t understand her problem at all. He had never actively felt desire towards another person. For him, just responding to somebody else’s desire was a rare enough occasion that the thought of actively desiring someone was…totally alien to him. He couldn’t even imagine why one would _want_ to at all.

Sasuke looked into the fire, shifting a little.

“Why do you care what you should do? Fuck it and be what you are,” he said finally.

She snorted at him.

“You never did what you wanted to do, only what was expected of you,” she pointed out.

Sasuke had to swallow her words because she was right. He had let himself be manipulated into believing all he wanted was revenge. Now, after learning the truth, after having the time to slow down and simply be, without a pressing goal hanging over his head, he had started to realize that being an ‘avenger’ wasn’t really what he wanted. He wasn’t sure yet what was it that he _did_ want, if anything, but a life of hatred and killing wasn’t it.

“I know better now.”

Karin sighed and flopped down to lie on the ground beside him.

“I guess having your brother here is good for you. You’ve seemed less of a bastard lately.”

He snorted quietly.

“Why not Itachi?” Sasuke asked, suddenly curious. It niggled at him, that Karin never looked at Itachi. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid him now that he thought about it.

Karin rolled to her side and propped her head on her elbow.

“Because he is _terrifying_ ,” Karin said seriously. “I am a sensor. A sensor with a range that can be counted in tens of miles.”

Sasuke nodded, already aware of that fact.

“Do you know what that means on a smaller scale? I can sense the way other people’s chakra behave in extreme detail. I know what you feel mostly from the way your chakra behaves. For example you, you are possessive to the extreme. Your chakra is restless, shifting and sprawling, constantly checking the area around you. It also clings to the things you like, the things you consider yours.”

Sasuke turned to shoot Karin a glare. He felt offended, violated somehow. He’d had no idea Karin could sense _that much_ so easily. He wondered just how much she _knew_ and never told.

“And Itachi?” Sasuke asked despite himself.

Karin lost that playful look very quickly.

“Itachi is not normal. His chakra never changes. _Never_. It’s completely still, even when he fights there’s barely a ripple. I can sense no intent from him at all.” She sounded frustrated, obviously sensing that Sasuke didn’t understand her problem with Itachi. “Imagine a lake. Deep in the mountains, a lake so big you can’t see from one shore to the other. Imagine it at night. A deep, black night. Everything is still. There is no moon and there is no wind. The water is completely, utterly still. It looks pretty and calm at first. You take a rock and throw it in the water. You expect to see some ripples, hear a splash. But there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. So you take a bigger rock and throw it into the water. Still nothing; the rock falls in but there’s no splash, no ripples, nothing. As if the water, the lake you see is not even there.” She sighed, but the sound was shaky. “It doesn’t matter if he fights or if he fucks, his chakra never, ever fluctuates.” She looked up at Sasuke. “Every human being’s, every animal’s chakra fluctuates in response to outside stimuli,” Karin insisted. “It’s not _normal_ , how Itachi’s chakra behaves.”

Sasuke wasn’t sure, but it sounded actually restful to him. That probably explained why it felt so good to him, being close to Itachi.

*

The crows had been gathering the whole morning, perching on the nearest trees, on the tent pegs, even on the ground, clustering in small groups. At first light, there were a dozen, by midday there were hundreds.

Sasuke watched them carefully, unnerved by their stillness and how quiet they were. Usually the crows were a playful, mischievous bunch, and loud. They talked to each other. To the snakes. To Itachi. To the women in the camp. To the children. To Sasuke. They made a thousand different sounds a minute. They also stuck their beaks absolutely everywhere, curious as a cats, reliably found in the most unexpected places, sometimes even in laundry baskets. Having them this quiet for so long, just watching silently and doing nothing, was setting Sasuke’s teeth on edge.

By the early evening everyone in the camp were casting the birds uneasy glances.

What was even more disturbing was the fact that they were ignoring Itachi too. Or rather his calls. His brother had been trying to tempt the birds with bits of freshly-killed game for hours now, calling them to him, but they only watched him, their numbers increasing every hour.

When the sun started setting, a single crow circled the clearing where Itachi stood and cawed loudly at him. His brother raised his head and his eyes widened in stunned surprise.

“You! But you should be with Naruto-kun…” Itachi whispered, eyes fixed on the bird. The crow dived down, bursting into black shards and disappearing just before it reached Itachi. Sasuke glimpsed something small and round fall through the air, surrounded by a faint chakra glow before Itachi snatched it up.

One of the birds which had been sitting quietly up till now launched into the air and flew at Itachi. The older Uchiha stood quietly, openly confused even when the bird landed on his shoulder and started sliding down his right arm. Itachi raised it to stop the crow from falling and as soon as it gained a safer perch, it started to jerk at Itachi’s sleeve.

The cloth gave way under the determined bird’s effort. It looked at him then, stilling for a long moment, just looking directly at Itachi. Sasuke suspected they were communicating in whatever form his brother used with the birds. There was a confused furrow on the older Uchiha’s face though, as if he couldn’t understand whatever the bird was trying to tell him.

The crow cawed at him, loud and insistent, the sound frustrated as if it too couldn’t understand why Itachi wasn’t responding properly.

After a moment, the bird hopped down the arm a bit, turned and slammed its beak into the exposed skin of Itachi’s forearm, tearing the skin deeply.

It was Sasuke who flinched at the deep wound and the blood welling up quickly. Itachi just kept his arm raised, an expression of confusion, even hurt flitting through his eyes as he watched the bird he’d loved for his whole life hurt him. He didn’t shoo the bird away, just stayed still, _letting_ it tear into him.

The bird looked at Itachi again, cawed a loud and frustrated sound, before pecking and clawing at the wound again, letting even more blood spill down Itachi’s pale skin and splatter to the ground in fat drops.

“What do they want?” Sasuke asked, feeling uncharacteristic pity curl in his stomach at the utterly lost expression in his brother’s eyes.

Itachi never raised his eyes from the bird hurting him.

“I don’t know. They keep showing me pictures of blood. But I don’t understand the context.”

“Pictures?” Sasuke questioned.

“They are animals.” Itachi sounded faintly exasperated, as if it was so obvious what he was talking about. In Sasuke’s eyes nothing about Itachi and the crows was ever obvious. “I think it’s hard for them communicate with me at all, and sending images is the only way that halfway works.”

Feeling powerless and like he couldn’t spend another second watching the sorrow on Itachi’s face, Sasuke reached for the bond he had with his snakes and called Hajime. The snake arrived in a puff of smoke, his hood outstretched, exposing the gold, eye-like, markings on the back of his head.

The white cobra froze mid-hiss, his head swaying gently from left to right as he scented the air.

“Can you communicate with them, Hajime? What do the crows want?” Sasuke asked his snake, not taking his eyes away from his brother.

The snake was quiet for a very long time.

_You should call Mother Queen_ , Hajime said suddenly, sounding uncommonly serious. _They will need help_.

“Help with what?”

Hajime turned to look at Sasuke, his dark red eyes uncommonly focused and serious.

_They want to sign a Contract with Itachi._ the cobra’s mental voice rang surprisingly loud in Sasuke’s head. Judging by the way both Itachi and the crow turned to look at the snake, Hajime had made himself heard by everyone present.

“Contract? But they are only flesh-and-blood birds. They have no chakra,” Sasuke protested, voicing what Itachi probably thought too, judging by his baffled expression.

_Don’t they?_ Hajime asked ironically. _For how many years did Itachi put unmeasurable amounts of illusions on them? How many times did he use his own chakra on them as carriers, as triggers for his illusions, messengers or even for communication? They carry his chakra all the time. They have carried his chakra for generations. The first birds probably only carried the illusions. But look around you. There are hundreds, if not a thousands of them. Many of them are very young. They are on the second, the third generation already. At some point, the offspring of the first crows were born with spells adorning their feathers already. From that, it was just a small step to develop their own brand of chakra, their own skills._ Hajime raised himself into the air, striking a forbidding figure. _Knowingly or not, Itachi changed them. While some of the Summoning Animals are like me, born out of a being far older than humans, most of them had their beginning exactly like these crows. As familiars. Partners. Simple animals._

Itachi’s eyes were wide and vulnerable as he looked at the crow on his arm, not even noticing the bleeding gash anymore.

“If you sign a Contract, you will not be free any longer,” he said gently to the bird watching him.

The bird pecked him in the arm again, this time not drawing blood but simply stating his opinion of such a stupid question. Because it was stupid, even Sasuke could see that. The birds had been Itachi’s since the day he was born, this would merely make it official.

_They don’t want to lose you again the way they did when Kanaye sealed your eyes. If you are bound by a contract, only a drop of blood and a simple seal will be enough to call them to you,_ Hajime explained to Itachi, watching the crows carefully.

Itachi lifted his other hand to gently pat the bird’s head, seemingly not even remembering the large, still bleeding gash in his arm. He gently raised his chakra and molded it near the bird. In response, the crow cawed, the air around it shimmering with a kind of natural chakra that animal summons used.

It was very little though.

“I have never seen a First Contract signing,” Itachi said, gently petting the crow. “But from what I’ve read in old scrolls I’ve managed to find during my time with Akatsuki, it requires enormous amounts of chakra from both the animal clan as well as the human signing it.” And the crows, while incredibly useful and intelligent birds, were not powerful. It would have taken them generations, hundreds of years maybe, to even manage to grow their chakra capability this much.

Hajime turned to Sasuke for the first time, the movement slow and deliberate, holding a kind of weight to his gaze that immediately put Sasuke on guard.

_If you could help, would you do it?_ Hajime asked, his mental voice aimed only towards Sasuke.

Sasuke looked at the form of his brother, body language radiating bewilderment and a kind of fragile happiness Sasuke couldn’t remember ever seeing in him, even...before.

He nodded.

_It will hurt_ , Hajime warned before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

It took only moments for Sasuke to feel the tug somewhere deep inside him. Something fragile and intimate was being pulled, stretched right out of him, and he knew that feeling. That cold, alien presence slowly pouring itself inside him.

It was a wretched sensation, a horrible thing to feel Mother Queen come to this plane of existence through him. She couldn’t have a body in this world, she being too anchored in the land of the dead, so she used the bridge that was Sasuke’s changed body and soul to secure a foothold in this world.

Without his will, Sasuke felt his eyes spin into Mangekyou, the left eye shifting into the modified Rinnegan. The eye felt alien though. Heavy and cold, it almost burned. He wasn’t surprised that he could neither see through it nor control it at all, not with the way Mother Queen settled herself inside him. The fact that he was even conscious at all was her version of being kind, but Sasuke couldn’t find it in himself to be grateful. Not when he could feel things missing. His mind was fuzzy, he was unable to recall his memories, most of them gone as though they’d never existed, his body heavy and unresponsive.

_Both need to bleed on the seal._

It was Sasuke’s mouth opening, his own throat producing the sound that boomed through the clearing like thunder, but it wasn’t his will that caused it.

He only caught what was happening in bits and snatches, Mother Queen slipping in her control occasionally and subduing more of his awareness than she’d planned. Next thing he was aware of was was kneeling on the ground, both his hands resting on the bare earth. He could see Itachi with a kunai in his hand, kneeling in front of the crow, a small gash on the bird’s leg bleeding sluggishly onto the ground.

_As a Head of an older Clan, I shall officiate this Contract._ The voice boomed through the clearing again, Sasuke’s head ringing with it and a fat drop of blood sliding from his nose, over his lips and splattering on the ground. _Uchiha Itachi, you were found worthy of signing a contract with the Crow Clan. The Crows shall offer their own and their offspring’s service. Uchiha Itachi shall offer blood and flesh to connect yourself to the clan in an unbreakable bond. The rules are as follows: the contract is signed in blood, and through blood it shall be carried on. The only ones ever allowed to sign it will be those of your blood and your blood only. You are allowed to add a name to the Contract, a physical manifestation of which you shall carry in a sealed scroll. You are not allowed to remove a name from the contract, therefore take care with your decisions. Should your bloodline die out, this contract will die with it. Should the Contract be signed under duress, the Crows have the right to kill the offender. Do you agree?_

“I agree,” Itachi said calm and serious, understanding fully the scope of what was happening.

The crows raised a racket, a thousand birds cawing at the same time, drowning out every other sound in the clearing and scaring off whatever animals were still around.

_Give your offerings then and brace yourselves._

Sasuke saw Itachi extend his other hand, and on his palm was an eye. Uchiha Shisui’s remaining sharingan eye, the one he’d removed himself and given to Itachi. The eyeball was encased in a faint glow, probably a jutsu keeping it viable for all those years. As he watched, the dark pupil bled red into an activated Sharingan, then shifted into the sharp pattern of his Mangekyou.

A heartbeat later, Sasuke felt an enormous jerk at his resources, his chakra all but burning out of him as a sealing array exploded around Itachi and the crow. It was huge, spanning the whole clearing. Even as he watched, dizzy from the power pouring out of him, he saw layers upon layers adding themselves to the already multi-level design. He’d never seen anything this complicated, this enormous. Even with his sharingan, it was hard to take in all the detail, all the tiny patterns and the sheer size of it. And the glowing lines kept drawing themselves far beyond his sight, far beyond anything a human being was capable of. Vaguely he was aware of movement, of animals and insects fleeing their immediate surroundings, but most of his attention was taken by the pain that had started to burn through his body. The chakra was being pulled from him mercilessly and in amounts he wasn’t used to.

It hurt, oh gods how it hurt. Mother Queen was sucking at his chakra as if there was no limit to it, pouring out an ocean and not showing any signs of stopping. His chakra levels quickly dropped below optimal, then below safe, rapidly encroaching on downright dangerously low. He didn't even notice when he dropped his head, blood now flowing freely from his nose, from his ears, filling his mouth and spilling on the ground. He was too busy panting through the pain and the strain of keeping himself sane with something as vast as Mother Queen occupying large parts of his mind and soul.

He didn’t push her away though, letting the being drain dry his reserves, bleeding him of chakra and power as easily as one drains a jug of water.

He thought of his brother, a too-young ANBU captain given an impossible choice and accepting it for a chance to save Sasuke’s life. He thought of the half-dead man wandering through the camp without purpose or any will inside him, passively accepting whatever happened to him. Thought of the breathtaking power of their fight, the mastery of ninja arts Sasuke had never seen in anybody before. Thought of the first smile on his brother’s face, the time when his crows found him again. The first time Sasuke thought his brother could even be happy at all.

He lowered himself to his elbows, resting his spinning head on the cold dirt and opened up the last reserves he had, the ones he’d trained himself to keep separate, the ones responsible for operating his life functions, and poured it all out.

He might have screamed, he didn’t know, his whole world consisting only of burning agony.

The chakra drain felt as if it stopped as suddenly as it had began, with no warning or obvious reason. The cessation of pain was almost as painful as the agony before, Sasuke’s body drowning him in hormones to ease what no longer was happening. His body ached in a way he wasn’t familiar with, every joint creaking as he fell to the side, not even noticing the dirt and blood smearing his face and hands. He lay on his side, panting, dizzy, and watched as Itachi tried to get up from his knees himself. His face was ashen, also streaked with blood, having run from his nose as well as from his eyes. In contrast, the birds looked well, no obvious signs of trauma or exhaustion on them.

The overcast sky let through a little more sunlight than before, and in that brief moment, Sasuke saw what Mother Queen had meant by offering _flesh and blood_. The birds, all of them, were changed. As the crows tilted their heads to look at Sasuke, he saw that while their right eye was black and normal, their left was dark red with three tiny tomoe. The bird now sitting on Itachi’s shoulder had the same markings in his left eye as Shisui’s Mangekyou.

Before he passed out, Sasuke realised that his big, dumb overachiever of a brother had given Sharingan to each and every crow in his animal clan.

*

Gaara stopped his words along with everyone else, looking at the samurai in the doorway. The man’s chakra was…somewhat odd. It was Ao’s reaction, the Mizukage’s bodyguard that made Gaara take notice.

The tall man was frowning at the samurai, subtly tilting his eyepatch, the stolen Byakugan towards the man.

“Why are you interrupting?” he asked the samurai sharply, shifting his stance into a ready position.

“Forgive me lords, but there is an urgent matter you need to be made aware of.”

The other kages turned their attention to the newcomer then, briefly distracted from their arguing.

“And what would that be?” came an arrogant drawl, almost a challenge in the bodyguard’s voice and it was a surprise to hear the usually-controlled man this openly hostile.

“It seems that security has been breached and unknown assailants have infiltrated the premises.”

The words created a pandemonium of shouting and accusations, Gaara’s siblings joining the general outrage.

Gaara said nothing, just watched Ao, therefore he was the only one who saw the man make a series of seals and activating his Byakugan.

“And out of those supposed unknown assailants, you would be one, yes, Uchiha Itachi?”

The words made the whole room fall into silence. Everyone present knew about the genius child who wiped the whole Uchiha clan out of existence. Most villages had tried to hunt him down at one time or another, and all met the same end.

Total annihilation.

Uchiha Itachi was not inclined to be killed, captured or even approached by any village, and he made that known by taking the hunter nin under genjutsu strong enough that those ninja usually came back to the village unaware they were a ticking bomb. Those under his control then caused havoc inside their own villages. There were rumors that in Stone Country Itachi had taken control of a whole team and then sent them back to their village. It ended with dozens of casualties and whispered warnings of potential bloodbaths should anyone approach Itachi again.

Gaara knew one thing for sure. Uchiha was an extremely dangerous man, and he knew that because Itachi had _murdered_ him when he still carried his demon.

“Ah, the Byakugan.” The samurai’s form shivered and then seemed to melt at the edges. The white armor became grey, then darker, eventually leaving the Uchiha in his true visage standing fearlessly in front of five kages and their bodyguards. “I wasn’t sure it would see through my illusion. Most wouldn’t. I have to congratulate you on your mastery of it.” Itachi’s voice was smooth and low, steady. His eyes were blood red, the signature Sharingan active and steady. He had the same long hair gathered in a single tail Gaara remembered. He was dressed in a long black concealing cloak.

He wasn’t wearing his forehead protector at all.

Gaara had no idea what was happening. Unlike other kages at the summit he knew perfectly well that the man was alive. Still, it surprised him, seeing Itachi here. It was ridiculously risky, and from what he remembered, Itachi was a very cautious fighter, planning his fights a dozen moves in advance. This brazen challenge, this utter foolishness of standing in front of the power the five kages represented was not in keeping with the man’s character. Gaara became instantly suspicious.

Noticing his siblings readying for a fight, he sent a tiny tendril of sand to stop them, to keep them still, _under no circumstances_ to engage the older Uchiha.

“You know you can’t survive here, right? With five kages, with two bodyguards each, we will wipe you out of existence.” It seemed the veteran ninja sensed something wasn’t right.

Itachi’s face didn’t change at all. He was still placid, his face smooth and betraying nothing, his chakra calm as an oasis, not a single ripple betraying intent.

“I came to deliver a message.”

“Who would want to listen to anything you say?!” It was the Raikage, oddly enraged, his body already gathering chakra for an attack.

“I came here to exact justice under the oldest of blood laws. My only target is Shimura Danzo,” Itachi said pointing his finger at the Konoha Hokage. “None of you will be harmed, none of your people will be harmed if they do not engage first.”

“You are mad if you think I will let you get away, especially after what you did to all those jinchuuriki!” the Raikage snarled.

Itachi didn't even turn his eyes towards the Raikage, staring at Danzo with his finger still pointing at the Hokage. Danzo, in turn, looked ten shades paler and was completely frozen in place.

“Shimura Danzo is manipulating you even now. He has Uchiha Shisui’s sharingan hidden under his bandages and other sharingan eyes implanted into his arm. He is using it to manipulate your decision, even as we speak.”

“What?!”

Ao didn’t waste time on pointless explanations or accusations, merely turned his activated Byakugan towards the Konoha Hokage.

“The Uchiha is telling the truth.”

Every eye turned towards Danzo. Gaara made sure to keep his siblings in place. Something more was going on here than met the eye.

“Uchiha Itachi is a confirmed member of Akatsuki, he has international kill orders hanging over his head,” Danzo shouted out through the din. “He needs to be killed immediately!”

The Raikage moved suddenly, with no outwards provocation, and crossed the distance between him and the Uchiha to run him through with his sword in one vicious move. Blood splashed back from the force of the tip of the sword exiting through Itachi’s back. It splattered in a wide swath, the last droplets landing on the table, right between Gaara’s hands.

The Uchiha coughed out blood, one of his hands curling over the hand driving the sword through him.

“Not fast enough.”

The words were quiet but carried across the sudden hush like a thunder. In the next moment, the world went insane. There was light so strong it blinded Gaara even through closed eyelids. There was noise too, noise so loud it reverberated painfully through Gaara’s brain. It sounded like a million birds screaming, a milion wings beating the air.

Even through the closed eyes he could see the faces.

There were dozens of them. Young, old, male, female. All of them with their eyes gouged out and all of them repeating the same words over and over.

Shimura Danzo facilitated the destruction of Uchiha Clan.

Shimura Danzo stands accused of murder and bloodline theft.

It felt like those faces were forever burned into Gaara’s mind. He could recall every wrinkle on the faces of the older ones, could recall every freckle on the children’s faces… He felt as if he would remember the eyeless faces till the day he died.

When he managed to open his eyes, he saw crows. Hundreds of them cawing and flying between the people in the room, shedding feathers and causing mayhem.

“Shimura Danzo” The new voice was lower, darker, and accompanied with a chakra so cold it made his teeth _ache_.

Sasuke.

“I sentence you to death for the crime of bloodline theft.”

Gaara looked up, as did everyone else, even the Raikage who found himself standing alone in the middle of the room, no sign of the body of Uchiha Itachi anywhere.

Uchiha Sasuke was standing upside down on the ceiling, his eyes blazing red. They locked gazes for a brief moment, which Gaara knew was a stupid mistake, before the Uchiha fixed his eyes on Danzo.

The Konoha Hokage wasn’t going to sit and wait for what was coming. His bodyguards attacked, and Danzo escaped in the confusion.

*

Kisame groaned, sliding down the pillar he was leaning on to sit on the ground. He cradled his head in his hands.

“I hate working through your genjutsu, Itachi-san.” There was a lot of feeling in his words.

Itachi made a small sound from where he was sprawled on the ground with Kanaye lying over his eyes and healing them, a steady trickle of blood slipping from beneath the closed lids.

“I really hope we are never, ever repeating this.” This was Suigetsu, his footsteps crunching down to their hideout. His companion was completely silent in comparison.

“Oh, I don't know, Suigetsu-kun.” Orochimaru’s voice was honey-thick as the Sannin reached his hand out and ran his finger down the back of Suigetsu's neck, causing the Kiri swordsman to shiver unpleasantly. “I found it quite fun, actually. Especially your work, Itachi-kun.” The Sanin sounded dreamy for a moment. “Four kage, two bodyguards each, one of them an extremely accomplished sensor with a fully functional Byakugan.” Orochimaru’s voice dropped into a soft purr. “And none of them realized they’d been under genjutsu for the last day.”

“The guards?” Itachi asked, exhaling softly as Kanaye shifted over his face and started glowing brighter.

“Dealt with!” Suigetsu reported eagerly, moving as far away from Orochimaru as their small hideout allowed.

“And alive,” Orochimaru added, watching the older Uchiha with interest. “As you wanted.”

“Danzo?”

“Running like the rat he is.” Orochimaru’s voice lost that low purr in favor of dripping with scorn. It turned out that Orochimaru hated Danzo with a passion, and was all for helping with the plan. “With Sasuke-kun closing in on him already.”

“He will need support,” Itachi murmured softly.

“Yeah.” Kisame rose up, groaning again at the very obviously shattering headache, and picked up the Samehada. “I’m going.”

“I can sense Hatake Kakashi approaching,” Orochimaru murmured softly. “He has with him somebody that feels…suspiciously like Tsunade.”

“Sakura, Tsunade’s student,” Itachi explained. “Kisame, make sure Kakashi makes a detour.”

“Yes, yes… I will make sure Hatake doesn’t interfere,” the Kiri nin muttered, making his way out of the hideout. “He probably won’t risk fighting me anyway.”

The Sannin hummed curiously. “Why would Hatake not want to fight Kisame?”

“Because Kisame will kill Sakura first. She is good and quite strong already, but no match for Kisame, and Kakashi knows that.”

Orochimaru moved closer to Itachi and crouched beside him. Kanaye hissed warningly, but the Sannin didn’t seem to be overly concerned with the threatening sound.

He reached to shift Kanaye from Itachi’s eyes and the snake attacked, lightning fast. Orochimaru didn't flinch, just used his other hand to push the snake’s body aside from what he wanted to see. Kanaye lashed out again, his fangs out and dripping poison, but the man merely snached his hand away while using the other to pull the snake even further away.

“There’s really no need for the drama,” Orochimaru murmured, again neatly avoiding Kanaye’s attack.

There was a relaxed air around him as he casually shifted the attacking snake from left to right that reminded Itachi that Orochimaru had been born into a clan deeply connected with his summoned snakes, and had spent his whole, quite long life, surrounded by them.

“What are you doing?” Itachi asked finally, exasperated by all the squirming and commotion near his face.

“Just checking something… Ah,” Orochimaru pulled his hands away. “Too much yin, Kanaye-chan.”

Kanaye hissed again at the overly-familiar suffix, but Itachi could feel the snake switch from healing to diagnostic, his chakra a little prickly and more neutral than before.

_Damn_ , the snake muttered telepathically, then switched to healing, but much more carefully, the chakra feeling softer than it had until now.

“Are you sure Sasuke-kun can do it? Can win against Danzo?”

“It’s not a matter of ability,” Itachi said quietly. “ Sasuke has to do it, so he will.”

Orochimaru hummed, watching the way Itachi lay sprawled on the ground, his ponytail snaking to the side, and an ill-tempered snake healing him.

“And then?” the Sannin asked, turning to look as Kisame disappeared in the crack leading to their hideout.

“Then we start anew.”

 

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the story: I really tried to find a good ending. It wasn't a secret that Five Kage Summit was going to be the end of this arc, and I think it fits. Sasuke fights Danzo exactly as it happened in the series, only this time everyone knows why - not only the very few in Konoha, but every leader of every ninja village, as well as every gossiping samurai, and Daimio of Land of Iron. No sweeping of THAT under the rug any more.
> 
> About Sakura - while I think she is already a strong fighter, she is very badly matched to fight Kisame, and let’s face it, there’s over a decade of difference in experience. And in power. Especially as Sakura is a close-range fighter, and no matter how good her control, Kisame would have sucked up all her chakra. Nobody can convince me she could win that match. Kakashi also knows it’s impossible to defend a third person against someone this skilled in using clones and deception as Kisame.
> 
> Also, it turns out I ADORE writing Orochimaru. Go figure, huh. Basically I love this fic and find it perfect from beginning to end - probably the only fic in my life I don’t have the urge to change.


End file.
